How to fall back in love with your story.

Here’s something about writing fiction.

When you first start writing seriously, and for a very long time (usually), you just write what you want. There isn’t anyone judging you. There isn’t anyone telling you that you have to change anything.

I mean, sure, it’s not easy.

You don’t get to know that you’re going to have any level of success. You don’t get to know that you’ll have any readers who aren’t obligated by blood or friendship to read what what you’re writing. You don’t get to know that you’ll ever earn a penny with your work. Or if you’ll ever have an agent. Or a publisher. Or if self-publishing is going to work out for you.

All of that, for a very long time.

But, at least, you get to write your own story your way. Maybe you have beta readers or a friend or two who trades chapters with you — but no one is telling you that you can’t write what you want to write.

Then you do find some success. You get an agent or an editor or a publisher. Or maybe you decide to enroll in a creative writing program and you get yourself a mentor or a teacher.

And suddenly, there is someone who’s job it is to at least attempt to direct your writing.

Sometimes that’s awesome. It’s confirmation. It’s someone who knows, telling you that you’re doing something right.

But, sometimes, it really, really sucks.

Every once in a while, you might find yourself in a strange and rather dark place. The place where you are trying to write something that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you anymore.

That isn’t a good place. It’s hard, because you’re probably paying this person to advise you. Or maybe they’ve already paid you to write the story. And they have more experience than you. They’re published, or they’ve taught for years, or they represent one of your favorite authors, or they’ve published dozens of best sellers.

And who are you?

I’ve been there before. Like the time I had to fire my literary agent, because we couldn’t get on the same page when it came to my work. That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.

And I’m right there, now. I have to write a book that will be my thesis when I graduate from my MFA program in August. And right now, today? I hate it. It’s lost everything that made it feel like it belonged to me. My mentor’s vision doesn’t match mine.

I was laying awake at two o’clock this morning, agonizing over this thing. And I finally realized something.

It’s not my job to make my mentor love my story. Not my mentor. Not my agent. Not my editor. Not any reader.

I haven’t even written the book yet.

My job, right now, is to figure out how to love my story again.

I have to find the balance between pleasing, in this case, my mentor, and writing the story I want to write. A story that I’m in love with.

And today that means reversing some big revisions — which is going to require me to go against the advice from my mentor that made me make the revisions in the first place. And also killing a couple of darlings that I’ve been holding onto too hard. And thinking about my story from a different angle.

And, yeah. Falling in love with it again. Making it mine again, while still working with a mentor that, let’s face it, I spent a lot of money to have access to in the first place.

Once you get to the place where you have people whose job it is to direct your work, you’ll have to learn what I’m learning right now at this very moment: how to hold on and still be flexible enough to take advice.

When you get there, maybe these steps will help:

Find a Friend

Not someone who is just going to agree with you, either. That’s no help.

Choose someone who knows your work pretty well, who isn’t afraid to tell you when you’re being a knuckle head, but who is firmly on your side. And then spill your guts.

It always helps me to talk a story out.

Make a List (or Two)

Get out your notebook and make a list of the elements of your story. The characters, the setting, the situation. The key scenes. The things you love.

I’m not talking about the changes someone else asked you to make. I mean the elements that made you love your story.

Then make a list of the ideas that are being thrown at you.

Then see how they mesh. What can you change without losing the threads of your story? What comes up for you that you hadn’t even thought of before?

Be Brave (In All Ways)

Be brave enough to speak up.

Be brave enough to say no.

Be brave enough to say yes, too, though.

Be brave enough to listen and take advice seriously.

Be brave enough to walk away, if you have to.

Be brave enough to stick it out until you’ve figured out how to fall back in love with your story.

If you enjoyed this story, give it some claps.

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