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I had glorious plans to write another blog post about editing and proofreading this week. But as I reflected on my time on that stage, I skipped down the memory lane of that period, and what I remembered from that time was suddenly front and center in my mind. 

Writer’s doubt. 

I once had someone ask me: "What do you do when God feels far away?" I wanted nothing more than to give them a straightforward, end-all answer, but I wasn't going to fool myself into thinking that was a possibility.

I wish it was a possibility! There were even things I knew I could say that was definitely true (He's not far away! Just have a little more faith! It will get better, you'll see!) but just like any moment of pain, it wouldn't help to hear those things, no matter how true they are. When we are struggling, we want answers and we want them now. 

Pain and grief manage to do a lot of things to a human being. They change them, hurt them, stretch them, and push them. But one of the biggest things I've noticed that pain and grief can do to a human is confuse them. How can they not? You drop a life-changing event into a person's life that hurts almost every step of the way, and that person will most certainly start asking questions in complete bewilderment, even if that question is just a small and helpless "why?".

It’s one of the best parts of the whole book writing process: the moment you put a period on a sentence and realize it’s the last one of your entire draft. You step back, and holy moly you’ve done it! You have a manuscript! This is the best feeling in the world! 

So what should you do next? Get beta readers? Start editing? Begin the publishing process? For me, I choose none of the above. What I actually do is stop everything relating to that book and take a long break. Full stop. The book goes into exile, but a friendly one! I promise! 

If I’m being honest, I wasn’t really sure how to write this post. Writing a book is such a unique experience for every writer and know to processes or books are going to be the same. That’s the whole point after all.

But in thinking about that, I recall how long I considered myself to be just a poser because I didn’t write books the same way I was always hearing or reading about. I’d read these articles and posts about authors complex outlining processes, storyboarding, and drafting and my heart would just sink.  I’d slip into a terrible habit of comparing myself to these authors and beat myself up for not doing things their way. I’d sit with tabs open to write my book and wonder what I was doing wrong. It was a vicious cycle.

So you’re writing your book. Things are going well and you’re feeling like you’ve really hit your stride. Every day you smash another goal and it won’t be long before your book is finished, right?

Wrong