Signs You're on the Right Track

I'm just starting a new project, and it's in that extremely exciting phase where you haven't realized all the traps you've set for yourself, yet, and you fool yourself into thinking maybe you really ENJOY this writing thing, and it's totally going to go smoothly this time, and probably every other time from here on it it will too, since clearly you've now figured the whole thing out.

Fool's paradise, I know. I feel like first chapters in a first draft are like the writerly version of doing whippets or something.

Except, you know, way less fun.

The Halfway Slump

Let's just start by saying writing is HARD.

All those  people who are all "oh my god I just get so INSPIRED, and I pour out an entire novel in a week!" are either lying, or writing REALLY terrible novels (also known as "first drafts").

As I've mentioned a-multiple-of-five times, I'm pretty OCD, so I tend to write fairly clean drafts. They're probably not working all that well, and there are definitely huge sections that should be cut, or added, or moved, or just BETTER, but the prose usually makes sense, and grammar has been employed.

This means I'm not--will never be--a true "burst of inspiration" type. In fact, I think that type has been made up solely for magazine-bios and romantic ideas of life in a garret. I don't care how good you are (or even how much mess you're willing to tolerate in your drafts), there comes a point in a book where you just say "wait, NOW what?"

Just...don't look down...