SPEAKER_01 0:00

Every novel project is gonna have a dip, maybe more than one. But here's the secret: the slog, the dip, the suck, the stuck, whatever you want to call it, it's temporary. And the dip is where success happens because it's really the make or break period. This is where you decide to stay or not.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacy Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Hi, writer. Welcome back to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey, and I'm so grateful that you're here with me. Today we're going to talk about a mindset topic that's been on my mind and on the mind of a lot of the writers that I've been working with lately. And that is what to do when we come to a creative crossroads. But before we jump in, I wanted to let you know that another cohort of my small group book coaching for fiction writers will begin in January of 2025. This program is for any commercial or genre fiction writer who wants to start developing their story idea and write their novel in the coming year. Join a small but mighty and welcoming group of writers who are working through the same story struggles as you, get professional editorial guidance and novel writing know-how, plus one-on-one support with individual book coaching calls with me for each writer every month. Space is limited to six writers, but you can secure a spot on the enrollment list right now. Just go to writeitscared.co forward slash group coaching to learn more and apply. Okay, writer, now let's jump into our topic for today. So it never, never fails, at least for me and many of the writers that I work with, that at some point during the process of drafting, revising, or planning a novel, we get the itch to walk away. And I don't mean take a break for a week. I mean shelve the entire thing, bury it in a drawer for an undetermined amount of time, and focus our creative energy elsewhere. If this has not happened to you yet, just wait. It will. I would bet my bank account on it. I call this a creative crossroads. And knowing what decision is right for you can be tough. And I don't believe it's as simple as the adage of winners never quit, because there are very legitimate reasons to walk away from a writing project. I mean, your life, heaven forbid, it could implode. Maybe you won't have the creative space or energy. Maybe what you're writing is too painful. It's digging up pieces of your past that you haven't healed from and you're not ready to face, and let alone write about, even if you thought you were. Or maybe the story idea you were developing just lost out to something else that literally hijacked your entire body, mind, and soul. All of those things have happened to me, and I am sure there are plenty more legitimate reasons that I have not considered. But you know, sometimes life gives you a hard no and you are supposed to listen. But there's other times when you are genuinely like on the fence and you don't know what to do, and going forward with your current project feels just as bad as dropping it because you've invested a whole lot of time and energy in it. And so these times when you're on the fence, they they might look like this. You've done a lot of work up front, whatever that means for you. Maybe you've fleshed out your characters and your conflict and setting. You know your plot, you've got an outline, and you're ready to write. You know what you need to do, but you're just not doing it. And that's when a new shiny idea starts to romance you. And you think, oh, it'd be so much fun to go over and write that. Uh another situation might be where you're in the midst of a draft and you're in that mucky middle, like that 40 to 65% area, and you're like, oh my gosh, what was I thinking? I am stuck, and I don't know how to get over there from where I am, and I can't see my way out. Um, or another time might be you are kind of staring down the barrel of your very first revision project, and you're thinking to yourself, oh my God, what have I done? What have I done? This is a mess, and you have no idea how you're gonna make it into a cohesive second draft. Or you have lost count of how many passes you've done in revision and you're tired, and you would just really, really love to sink your teeth into something new. I am talking about those times. So do you jump ship or not? The creative call can be very, very much like a siren song. It can be luring, it can be deceptive, it can be a form of resistance. But is it? How do you know for sure? The bad news is that you can't know for sure. I'm sorry, I know that sucks. It can be really hard to decide when it's time to push through something and when to start something fresh. It kind of reminds me of a piece of wisdom a preceptor once imparted to me years ago. And that person said, don't just do something, stand there. And by that, they meant don't make a rushed decision just because you think you need to be doing something. Instead, take your time, consider all the angles. So that's my suggestion if you're in a place like that. Take some time or make some time for some deep reflection and investigate to determine if you're avoiding discomfort of moving forward in your current writing project, or if the creative passion is truly leading you to follow a different path. Seth Godin, marketing genius that he is, wrote a book called The Dip. The subtitle is a little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick. Came out a while ago, back in 2007, I think, and I recently reread it. Though it's more geared toward career paths and business ventures, and I couldn't really apply the best in the world concept to fiction writing. I did find the principles to be aligned with the experience of writing a novel. So the gist of his book is that any endeavor that requires sustained effort in order to reach a desired return on investment will follow a predictable pattern of behavior. You'll start strong, then it will get hard, then it will get easier. And when I apply this to writing my books, it lines up completely. And I think that's true for a lot of us, and it's certainly true for a lot of the writers that I work with. When we begin a new novel project, be that flushing out of premise, outlining, noodling on character motivations, you're researching, or maybe we're just panting to see where it goes, we're rewarded for our efforts very quickly. This is the learning phase. It's exciting, it's it's fresh. We're making new things, we can see progress. But as time passes and we know more about the story, or sometimes less, it gets hard. We get less result for our effort and our motivation wings. The uncomfortable middle phase of striving towards the goal of finishing a book involves staring at the beautiful outline in our character bios, now realizing that we have to write the draft, which is going to be a mess and so far from the idea that we're holding in our minds. It's after we've written through the setup and then we're like, oh no, what happens next? Oh shit. I think I need to go back to the drawing board on a few things, right? Or it's when we're revising and we're trying to figure out how to rearrange this heap of words into something that makes sense. So yeah, those things that phase, this is the suck, otherwise known as the dip. And I like how Seth Godin defines the dip in his book. He says the dip is the long slog between starting something and mastery. And for our purposes in writing a novel, I think we can equate mastery to being a finished book that we are proud of. Now, every novel project is gonna have a dip, maybe more than one. But here's the secret the slog, the dip, the suck, the stuck, whatever you want to call it, it's temporary. And as Goten says in his book, the dip is where success happens because it's really the make or break period. This is where you decide to stay or not. And if you stay and make it through a rough patch, the reward or return investment is realized sometimes far more than what you expected. Now, hard no situations aside, the key to knowing if you should or shouldn't keep going is to see if you're in a dip situation. So ask yourself a few of these questions. Have you been here before? Have you walked up to this moment in time with a novel before and then walked away? Have you started more drafts than you've finished? Is this your very first novel? Is it getting hard? Are you thinking to yourself, what the hell was I thinking? Are you considering walking away because you're afraid you can't finish, or because you're afraid of what will happen if you do finish? Are you telling yourself a fancy procrastination tale? Like, I'm not saying no to this story, I'm just saying I'll do it later, and meanwhile, I'm gonna check out this shiny new idea. If you say yes to some of those questions, then you, my friend, may be right smack in the middle of the sock, the dip, the stuck. And the urge to walk away isn't actually your idea. It's our well-known frenemy, resistance. You know, the force that sometimes whispers, sometimes yells, you really shouldn't bother. Why? Don't finish that, don't keep going. That idea has been done before. What were you seeking? And when does resistance work the hardest and talk the loudest? Yeah. Right before a breakthrough. So if you are struggling with creative indecision and you feel like you're at a creative crossroads, and you're asking your writing friends for input about what you should do, I gently suggest doing some introspection. Now the shitt is that no one can figure this out for you. And there is risk on either side. But no one said we weren't gonna have to skin a proverbial knee here, right? So consider using the following journal prompts to help you with your decision-making process. And I encourage you to set a timer, do some free writing hard and fast, and then come up for air and review it. Ask yourself, why am I no longer drawn to this project? What is it about the new idea that excites me more than the current one? How would I feel if I finished my current project? What is my singular creative aspiration? What's my North Star? Am I serving it by splitting my focus or walking away from this book? Dig deep. Really ask yourself if you're avoiding discomfort or if you are truly following inspiration. Someone once told me that finishing a project is a skill set. And I agree. Starting is easy, finishing is hard. It requires self-discipline. Keeping an eye on the prize and one foot in the reality of where you are while simultaneously trying to move forward, plus accepting change and setbacks. Yay. But the cool thing about this particular skill set, the skill set of finishing, is that it can be learned. You can learn to finish a little at a time simply by narrowing your focus and doing the next right thing in front of you repeatedly. And sometimes we have to get outside help to know what that next right thing is. So don't be afraid to reach out for help. This might be where you want to talk to an editor, where you want to talk to a book coach, uh, where you want to find a critique partner or, you know, uh a writing petty. So here's a few recommended resources on the subject of quitting versus sticking that I have found helpful. Number one is Dear Writer, you need to quit by Becca Sime. This is a phenomenal book and it's really good in audio. The second is The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. The Dip, a little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick by Seth Godin. And then finally, is a book I have not read. It's How to Decide by Annie Duke. It's on my TVR. So if you read it, let me know what you think. But I have heard in my circles that this is an excellent read if you are on the fence and you're trying to decide to walk away from something. If this is your first time writing a novel and you find yourself in any of those on the fence situations I mentioned earlier, especially if you're in the middle of drafting your first book, I would venture a guess that you are in the dip. And pushing through to finish at least the draft will serve you well. It might be shit, you might shove it in a drawer, but it will teach you that you can do it and you can do it ugly, and neither one will kill you. We cannot pressure test everything. Sometimes we have to leap and decide to stick. Sometimes we have to make that decision over and over until it's done. Sometimes we have to eat our vegetables so that we can have dessert. Basically, like we got to do the hard thing first, then go play with inspiration afterwards. There is no right way to do this. Experimentation is 100% warranted. But if you reflect on your past experiences, writing related or not, and see a pattern of walking away when the only thing that was on the line was the promise you made to yourself, double check if you are serving your truths or if resistance is working over time to protect you from uncertainty. So I hope this episode helps you in exploring the possibility that you may be in the dip, you may be facing resistance, and allow you to ask yourself some questions that will help you more easily determine where to focus your creative energy. Just do your best to ensure that your decision aligns with your values and your long-term goals. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I'll be back next week with a new guest. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it on your socials. It will help other writers find the podcast. And if you're interested in the group book coaching opportunity that I mentioned earlier, go to writeitscared.co forward slash group coaching to learn more and apply.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.