First Sunday Q&A: How I Navigated the Creative Slog
Published writers have tolerance for the slog of a book project--those slow, almost unbearable moments when nothing seems to work. A few different tips to navigate it
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“First Sunday” Q&A is where we dissect and discuss your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. I plan to write this the first Sunday of each month for you, as long as you wonderful people send me your questions. My intention is to make this a safe, generous place to exchange ideas and talk about the deepest writing and publishing issues on your mind.
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Q: I’m probably not the first writer who feels stuck. But I just got my manuscript back from my wonderful writer’s group and the amount of feedback was overwhelming. All good, they are fantastic readers, but I can’t think through the comments and I have no idea how to begin to use them. It feels like I’m in a swamp of uncertainty now, which makes me feel like a bad person after all their hard work and generosity. In a class, you once called it the creative slog.
What do you do when you’re in this kind of slump, when you don’t know how to move forward? How do you navigate the creative slog?
A: A determining factor between writers who actually finish a book—and possibly get it published—and those who don’t is tolerance with this slog.
For me, the slog arrives at fairly predictable moments:
After I download the first, enthusiastic creation of my idea and I’m faced with the reality of making it sing for someone else.
As I read my completed rough draft and see its ineptitude prior to revision.
When I’ve gotten useful feedback but am stunned at the amount of work the changes will take, like you shared above.
When I realize I need considerable new skills to revise to my taste.
During the long wait for responses (from agent or editor or anyone else who holds authority in the publishing world).
Writing teacher Jacqui Banaszynski summed it up beautifully: “The humility of being this stuck will fade once I’ve finished and back in blissful editing mode. The lessons I’ve had to learn again will also fade with time, but for now, they blink like neon.” (Nieman Storyboard)
That neon blink is hard to ignore, isn’t it. It can shape your entire belief in yourself as a writer. It enables the push.
How do you traverse it?
I love how author Stephen Aryan describes it. This “effort to keep going and press on no matter how tired or fed up you are with the book,” he writes. “No matter how much you hate it and think it’s crap. No matter what else is going on in your life with your family, your friends and your day job.”
But what if the slog appears as a kind of road sign, an important signal of the need for a new approach?
After years of pushing through the creative slog, I began questioning the pervasive notion that discipline is the key to making a successful writing life—or career. I began to consider whether pushing forward was the only way to navigate when overwhelmed. What if nothing is broken, at these pivotal moments, but is just asking for that new perspective, is there a different way of going forward?
What would that different way look like? Here’s what I learned.