Hi Friend,
Happy Thursday! I’m actually ecstatic that the week is coming to a close because it’s been a doozy. All my progress on Pip and Lucy was erased when I realised it wasn’t serving the story I had in my head. I set out to write a rom-com but what I’d written wasn’t very rom or com. It was flat.
I have kept the file of course (please don’t ever just delete stuff into the black void) but I have started fresh and wow. It’s feeling a lot more in tune with my vision for the story. Much rom. Much com. Insert happy dance.
The thing that made me realise why Pip and Lucy version 1 wasn’t working was a little book called Romancing The Beat by Gwen Hayes. I follow a few romance authors on Instagram now since getting into reading the genre and I’ve seen them refer to this book so I hoped it might help me with the recipe for romance.
I was a terrible person and bought it from the Big Bad Retailer starting with A for $15 compared to Booktopia for $40, and I’m glad I did because when I call it a little book I mean little. It’s 85 pages long and feels a bit like a blog series. But it’s solid.
The book goes through all the beats you need to hit when writing a romance. Introduce character 1, introduce character 2, meet cute…
And that’s where it all fell apart. I didn’t have a meet cute. I had a meet meh. The shame.
I don’t even know how I was so far off track, because Love To Hate You is a YA romance. Sure, it’s got a lot of other issues it deals with, but it is essentially an enemies to lovers romance.
So why is Pip and Lucy so hard to get into? Why am I overthinking?
I don’t really have the answer. Maybe I’m just overdue some dread, as Love To Hate You came so easily. Maybe it’s the pressure of writing my second book in a year.
Yeah. That second one sounds about right.
Anyway, I took Romancing The Beat and the free beat cheat sheet (try saying that five times fast) from Gwen Hayes website and decided to start trying to hit those beats. And it worked! I achieved 3,000 words yesterday and wrote the introduction to Pip chapter and some of the introduction to Lucy chapter. I feel so good about this fresh start. I also have a great meet cute in mind.
I haven’t ever really subscribed to formulaic writing, but I can now appreciate that the reader expects certain things from a romance book and I want to make sure I deliver. I always want my work to be the best it can be. That can’t be achieved with a first draft of course, and a lot of work goes into making books what they are, but I am aiming for good bones. Something to work with.
I will be honest though, starting over feels adjacent to failure. Not quite there, because all words and work is leading toward something, even the stuff we scrap. But it’s a close enough feeling that I had a massive meltdown on Monday and couldn’t do anything for the whole day beyond my basic life stuff as a mother.
Tuesday I read Romancing The Beat. Getting myself back up on Wednesday was really hard. I had the inspiration from reading the book, but mostly it was just me shouting at myself that the only way books get written is by writing them. There was a story in my head that needed to be written and it was my job to do that.
I basically kicked my own arse into my chair and forced myself to write.
My coach Katherine told me that I have an ability to get myself started again. I can be sick, or take time off, or do something else, but I always come back and get to work again. I like to think of it as tenacity but maybe it’s more akin to stubbornness.
I don’t want to let myself down.
I’ve dreamt of being a published author since I was a kid. I am pursuing my dream. I will not give up because I wrote 12,000 words that didn’t serve my story.
I remember being at a Jay Kristoff book launch once (I think it was Darkdawn) and he said he wrote 100,000 words of Nevernight that needed to be scrapped because it was all basically back story.
Wow.
I bet he learned a lot about his characters and the world though.
I guess that it has taken writing this blog post to make me realise is that it’s all ok. I haven’t lost anything. It’s just time to find another way into the story.
Thanks for reading :)
Steph
Ugh, it’s so hard to ditch one word let alone 12,000. I really feel for you. What I admire you for doing is not despairing and deciding to hang up your boots for good. You took time to reassess and process your work, and then got straight back into it again.