I'm writing a book and it's been terrifying (highly recommend)

words on following my gut and trusting the process

On a sticky summer afternoon five years ago, my boyfriend and I were sitting at a cafe by the beach, hot dusty air filling up our nostrils and turning our eyes into sandpaper. The only reason I can trace this particular memory back to five years ago is because I remember I was reading Park Avenue Summer, and I know I took a picture of my copy that week. It wasn’t a very good day; neither of us likes the beach before 7pm, we were waiting for someone who was late, and it was truly too hot to function.

For lack of better entertainment - and because we, as a couple, always carry at least one notebook around -, I showed him a few ideas for a fantasy world I’d been dreaming up. I’d been writing all my life, and by that time, I actually did it for a living as a beauty writer. Still, I’d never looked at myself as an aspiring author. In my wildest dreams, I wanted to be a girlboss and run my own business, so I approached writing almost in a detached way, as something that brought me joy and afforded me a job I actually liked while I planned for bigger things.

I kept the notebook and life moved on. For the last five years, I’ve taken sporadic looks at those notes, added concepts that came up occasionally, and I’ve lived my life thinking that one day, maybe decades into the future, if I ever felt like it, I could bring that world to life.

Fast forward to this year, which has been challenging and enlightening and really, really shitty at times. Life has changed and I’m not working as a writer anymore; in fact, before I started this substack, I hadn’t written more than emails and instagram captions in years.

But a couple months ago inspiration stroke again, and this time, it was screaming at me. Like, screaming armadillo screaming, scream queen screaming. I started having the strangest, most vivid dreams (which, to be fair, has been a regular occurrence all my life; my subconscious is a scary place), ideas came up seemingly out of nowhere and, in an effort to write them all down, I was always revisiting that notebook.

Because I was also intently following the course from The Artist’s Way, at some point I started feeling guilty for ignoring all those signs. So I made a moodboard, and another one, and then a google doc, and another one, and the world that had been nothing more than a couple of scribbles on a page for five years was suddenly a thing with a life of its own. And so the process of writing my first big story began.

Writing (and taking what I write seriously for the first time) has been daunting and intimidating in unexpected ways. It has taught me a great deal about myself, and it has brought me closer to my inner child.

As someone who has learned to seek control as a coping mechanism, letting go of expectations and the artificial structures I’d built around my creative work wasn’t easy. But I tried to do it my usual way, and it just wouldn’t work - I’d feel blocked, overwhelmed, frustrated after dedicating hours to aspects of the story that didn’t excite me at the time. My creative mind wasn’t following a linear process because it wasn’t being fed linear references - I had random ideas for this and that and that other thing, but I wouldn’t allow myself to pursue them immediately because I had A Structure and A Plan, both to be followed to a T. Turns out I tend to be the one taking the fun out of everything I do (this was genuinely breaking news to me!).

But if I wanted to finish this book, I had to accept that nothing about writing it would be about following a plan. Instead, I would take two steps forward and ten steps back, I’d change my mind, I would jump again and again from research to writing to world building, and I would write full chapters before knowing how the story would end. The process had - it still has - a mind of its own. And so does the story. I eventually learned to accept that my only job was to listen and let them guide me.

When I decided, months ago, to take a break for a change and spend my afternoon writing for fun, I had no plans of writing a story that might one day become a book. But now I’m consumed by it. I’ve decided I’ll see it to the end, no matter what, and I don’t think I’ve felt this excited about anything since I was a kid. If this never gets published, if the story never leaves my drawer, I’ll know I was still meant to write it for a reason. It has given me so many reasons already.

When I feel lost and don’t know where to turn to, I look for signs. I usually journal and ask the universe to “please show me a really obvious sign, because I’ll miss it otherwise!”. If you, too, are looking for a sign - to move forward with a project or idea that moves and inspires and ignites you, then I’m afraid this post is it. This is your very obvious sign. Go for it.

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