It has been oddly vulnerable writing what’s essentially a rough draft of a book in public with an audience. I’ve loved hearing from you about the story as I go. Here’s what it’s been like writing for Kindle Vella.
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
-Anne Lamott
People often assume that because I write every day in public for an audience that speaking my mind is really natural to me. That it’s something I’ve always done easily. And that I was supported for it when I was younger. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I learned early on to hide my notebooks. My mom would find them anyway and destroy them. One time, she even pitched one into the fireplace. I got called “devil spawn” if I wrote with profanity or anything that was considered out there in my strict religious home (spoiler: a lot was considered “out there” in my strict religious home).
Here are 4 reasons why it could be hard to write, even if you have the time and really want to.
I’m doing NaNoWriMo for the very first time. Have you done it? How did it go?
“Let’s do an experiment,” Justin said.
The truth is that once upon a time, I thought words were limitless. And that I could be limitless, too — if only I could get good enough at expressing myself. That if I could simply string together the correct combination of words that I could unlock the doors that I watched my friends walk effortlessly through. The ones that were opened via the elite summer boarding programs that their parents wrote the big checks for.
On one hand, it’s a shame that not all ideas are facehuggers. But on the other hand, there’s a price to be paid when they are. After all, chestbursters aren’t exactly a picnic either.
I recently went over 439 unfinished drafts from the past 4-5 years and finished or deleted them. How many did I keep? How many did I delete?
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