Everything I'm Glad I DIDN'T Know When I Started Writing
- Jul 17
- 7 min read
And Why.
Eyo!
Here's the deal: I've been seeing more and more of those 'Everything I Wish I Knew Before I Started _______' titles, and . . . well, they have their place. But too much 'advice' can easily lead to information overload, even for more experienced writers with their own list of things they wish they knew. Plus, having a mindset of 'woulda coulda shoulda' is rarely healthy. So I'm doing something a little different today.
I present to you: Things I'm glad I didn't know sooner, and why.
New Writers: Proceed With Caution. This is me looking back at some things I've learned the hard way, for the benefit of those stuck wishing they'd been an expert from the beginning. If you find yourself feeling put off or discouraged, skip down to the end; I do have a super-secret 'wish I did know' there!
1: It Will Never Be 'Done'
There will never be a point when your book, your instincts, or a higher power tells you 'It's perfect.' In fact, your work will never be perfect. It will only ever be as good as you can make it at that point in time.
I don't know that I expected that specific scenario, but I did expect a clear finishing point -- maybe an archway that makes a cool noise when you finally go through it, like in a videogame.
It doesn't work like that.
Here's the thing: you're always progressing. This is good. But as long as you keep progressing, your best effort will continue to surpass what it was before. This is also good - until you start going over older work, knowing it was as good as you could make it at the time, and telling yourself how awful it is.
A serious danger for writers is getting stuck in the editing loop, revising scenes and changing word choice for no reason except that you want it to be different. It's not like looking at paintings you did a year ago; the paint dries, and that's that. No more changes. But for some writers, the ink never dries. They waste years they could have spent working with publishers and readers stuck in an endless loop of making their book 'better', waiting for some signal that it's finally 'done'.
It's never done. It will never be done until you muster the guts to step back, let go, and say, "Here it is."
I'm quite glad I didn't know that when I started writing.
2: You Will Be Lonely
Authorship is isolating. The actual act of writing is not something you can easily do with friends. Sure, you can sit at a table with other writers and stare at your blank page that way, but writing your story is up to you - and only you.
Beta readers, friends, and family members can all be immensely helpful for talking through problems, bouncing around ideas, and general nerdery over your story's lore - to a point. But many fiction writers are introverts whose friends, though close, may be few; family doesn't always share the same tastes and passions; and beta readers do actually have lives, in which they might get a new job, discover new interests, or suddenly have to wrangle a dozen other personal matters. Sometimes you hear from people almost daily; other times, you feel as if you actually have fallen off the face of the earth.
The hard part is recognizing the wallow of self-pity before you're up to your knees in it. And it is hard.
Being told this might not have scared baby-writer-me off completely, but I probably wouldn't have believed it - and of course I would've been surprised and indignant when it turned out to be true.
3: Payoff Takes Years
We tend to make fun of the stereotype of new or young writers who think they can hammer out a first draft, check for spelling errors, and immediately start sending it to publishers, but let's be real: none of us wanted to be told 'This could take years' when we were just starting out. I certainly didn't.
Time is a tricky thing. Someday, we won't be subject to it, nor will it have real bearing on anything we do; but while we live here, deciding how we spend our time is as pertinent as deciding to put on clothes in the morning.
Did I figure I'd spend a lot of my life writing? Yeah, kinda, though I was pretty young and felt pretty invincible and time meant something a little different back then. Did I think I'd spend ten years writing and scrapping and rewriting and scrapping multiple versions of the same story? No, I did not, and if future me had traveled back in time to say so, past me would have laughed first and then chickened out and found a different career.
Ten years . . . with nothing 'substantial' to show for it. Yet.
I'm glad I didn't know it would take this long then, but it's taught me something important: I live in a country that worships instant gratification, yet I've managed to dedicate huge portions of my resources, my energy, and my heart to something that will not yield the world's idea of 'payoff' (i.e., a physical published copy of my book and lots of money) anytime soon - if ever. And I am content, as much as my finite human state can allow.
Knowing that would not have impressed me ten years ago, when I thought trusting in God's plan meant believing I could singlehandedly change the world. (I admit: I was naive. So were you.)
Now, nothing is more comforting than knowing I can putter through one day at a time doing what I was made to do and leave the results up to the One who made time.
4: Your 'First Book' Will Probably Never See the Light of Day
I'm not talking about the fairy-tale retellings you wrote on printer paper with colored markers in kindergarten (wait, what do you mean I was the only one?) In my case, I'm thinking about that one project I was so passionate about, I planned an entire series based on titles alone and spent hours deliberating over the perfect colored border to go with it. The one I wrote when I was 11 and frighteningly obsessed with an overly romanticized version of wild horses - and ancient Egyptian mythology, because those two things obviously make perfect sense together.
More than ten years later, my mom has had to hide the one printed copy of said story under lock and key because if I ever have to look at it again, I will probably burn it. It was bad.
But I'm a perfectionist. And had I known I would one day feel that way about it, I wouldn't have written it. I wouldn't have spent hours and hours making it exactly the kind of self-indulgent thing I wanted it to be.
And later, upon discovering the world of pirates, ships, and sea monsters, I probably wouldn't have been inspired to write a story set therein.
So, no, my 'first book' will never see the light of day. But that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it. It just means I needed that time to learn without restraints, without expectations, and even without standards. I started out writing garbage (by my current standards), and at some point, it started becoming something pretty presentable.
And anyway, publishing the very first thing you write is so overrated. That's like trying to make a living off the noodle art you made in school. Doesn't mean it's not important, or part of your journey. It is okay to realize 'Wow, I was really bad at this. I've learned a lot since then.' It's okay to be bad at something new.
5: Christian Fiction Is... Complicated
There's kind of a stigma around Christian media, one I hope is being debunked, but anytime you throw the word Christian in front of a book genre . . .
Well . . .
People (even well-meaning people) have assumptions. They tend to automatically think of romanticized westerns, lonely closed-off single women finding the perfect man, angsty girl meets problem horse, puppies, and - (wow, how do I put this gently?) - well, just subpar storytelling.
When I say I'm writing Christian fantasy, what probably pops into your head is The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings (which are amazing, but deserve to be left as they are) - or just an allegory with painfully obvious parallels to God and 'worldly powers' and why leaving the ordained path will lead to eternal torment. Either I'm plagiarizing classics, or I'm telling you what to think instead of showing you how to think. (A problem that plagues the other end of the spectrum too, by the way).
I have more to say on what this issue really is, why it should be dethroned, and how that can be done, in a future post. But had I known as a newbie that I would end up posting about this because it is that complicated?
Yeah, I would've run off to join the circus or something. Or become an accountant.
Writing through your personal worldview is pretty easy, to a point. Standing your ground to keep that worldview, challenging others' worldviews, and making a point to address misrepresentations of your worldview? That's terrifying.
Christian fiction is a little like contemporary Christian music; there are certain things everyone expects, whether that's in regard to content (or style; any rebellious Skillet fans out there?), message, or - and we've seen this happen with music - 'setting a standard' as an artist. Yes, we ought to be the example, but when did it become okay for an artist's supposed Christian supporters to crucify them socially when they can't live up to superhuman standards?
So yeah, being a Christian author is complicated. I love the challenge now, but as a newbie? I was not ready.
There are probably other things I would not have wanted to know starting out, but these are the main ones. As for something I do wish I'd known sooner? The incessant repetition of the phrase 'Keep Moving Forward' in Meet the Robinsons. Honestly, why do we not talk about that film more? It's like a warm hug for the weird little creative inside me.
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Thank you for being here today, my friend. Until next time,
Onward!
~ Lydia
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