Erin Lodes

At the start of this revision process I talk a little about how John had me outline and get to know my characters better, and revising for me involved being okay veering away from my outline when the story called for it and getting to know my characters even better. But the big thing that had to happen so all of those writer-y things could occur is that I had to trust my instincts, be willing to let go, and be willing to work harder.

I’ve been working on this book for six years — holy shit it’s probably seven years now actually. I knew just enough to know it wasn’t good enough and I’d been spinning my wheels forever trying to make it good enough without really doing significant work to make it that way.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was working. I was getting up early and staying up late and tweaking sentences and reworking the plot and changing characters and writing new chapters and sure it was better than when I started but it definitely wasn’t good enough. Not just good enough to satisfy how amazing I wanted it to be but not good enough to even satisfy the basic standards for a book.

And here’s why: I wasn’t trusting my instincts. I wasn’t letting go. I wasn’t working hard enough.

Let’s just take the first chapter, the first part of my book where John sat me down and told me to get some confidence and do better. I’ve had plenty of different beginnings to this book over the years and I knew that none of them were quite right. Not like on the surface where I told myself I was definitely doing better, but deep down where I knew none of them were quite right.

They started too slow, they were too pretty, they were too involved with themselves. But, I didn’t trust that little voice that said this isn’t quite right. Years and years, too many revisions to count, too many opening scenes to remember. I didn’t trust that little voice. I told myself I was being too hard on myself — which is something I have a tendency to do.

I was hanging on. Hanging on to things I’d written that were good, but weren’t the start of this story and maybe didn’t belong in this story at all. And I was hanging on because I told myself this is good enough. Good enough to catch people’s attention. Good enough to catch some agent’s attention. Good enough to get me a publisher and get me readers.

And why?

Because I wasn’t trusting my own instincts. I was hanging on. And I didn’t want to work quite that hard. I didn’t want to start my beginning from scratch. I didn’t want to rework my character’s voice. So I told myself this is good enough.

And then John called me on my shit.

You can do better, he said. He said it all the time. Over and over throughout the months I’ve been working on with him.

You can do better.

And of course he was right.

I could do better. I did do better. I did so much better.

I stopped hanging onto prose I was so in love with because at the time, when I wrote it six or five or three years ago, it was the best thing I’d done at the time. Because now, after years of working on my skills, I could do better. And maybe I was scared to try and discover that I really couldn’t do better or maybe I wanted someone to say it was good enough so I didn’t have to tear the whole thing down and build it from the ashes because that task seemed so daunting.

And John would say that, sometimes. This is good enough. But there was always a but afterwards. BUT… you can do better.

So I started trusting my instincts. When I read through a chapter that made sense but didn’t feel quite right to me, I trusted the voice that said it wasn’t good enough yet.

I wasn’t afraid to let go. I deleted whole scenes. I wasn’t afraid to rearrange the scene progression or try a new metaphor or put in different characters.

And I worked harder. If I needed to scrap everything I’d written during my fast-drafting phase and start a scene or chapter from scratch, I did. Because I could do better.

And I did.

I did so much better than I’ve ever done before.

And even though the book isn’t quite done yet — still one more revision pass to go — I know it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. And I know it’s going to be even better.

Because I can do better.

How I Finished My Novel is going to be an ongoing blog series detailing how I finish this freaking thing. I know, I know, you could probably tell that from the title… I’m being helped along on this journey by John Adamus, who is amazing and you’ll hear a lot about him in this blog series.

If you haven’t already, check out Part One and start from the beginning.