Although I’ve been in the world of Project #2 for the past few years, it’s been a while since I worked on the story itself. So whilst it is something that has been a somewhat active part of my life, I’ve been in the world-building and the story itself hasn’t been touched in a long time indeed. As it is time now to give other projects their deserved rest (and there’s quite a few of them taking a nap now), I’ve been looking forward to returning to Project #2.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t been nervous about it. Because I have been. I do thoroughly believe letting projects breathe is for the best, I think it’s a necessary part of allowing stories to grow because focusing on it can limit you in terms of what you’re seeing, narrowing your scope. If you take a long break, however, that can lead to apprehension about returning, and I definitely felt that.
Part of those nerves are also because I have exceptionally high hopes for this story and trying to make it into what I know it can be is a daunting task. It can be so easy to fear a project because you know what you want it to become, making you doubt your abilities, your creativity, yourself in general. Can you make this project what it needs to be? Or is it something entirely out of your reach? It’s good to push yourself, but what if this is pushing yourself beyond what you’re capable of?
Those doubts are valid, but they shouldn’t stop you. Maybe what you’re dreaming of is something that is beyond you, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be beyond you forever. And maybe working on something that challenges you is how you eventually get there. That can be tough though, especially when you have such high hopes for something, and it can easily lead you to a state where you never work on it because you’re too afraid of what it can be, and so you never make any progress on getting it there at all.
Thankfully, I’m pushing through that fear. Once I finished the world-building task I had set myself, I gave it just a little longer but told myself that, if I left it too long, I might be too afraid to ever get back into it and that simply wasn’t something I could allow. I’ve been working on this project for so long now, over a decade, and I can’t allow nothing to come of it, not when it already holds such a special place in my heart. Persevering through that fear of the challenge, the fear of perhaps even greatness, is no easy task, but it can sometimes be the exact thing you need to progress; stagnation is the death of creativity, and challenges are how you grow.
The other small reason that I feared returning was because there are some major kinks that need to be sorted out. There are a lot of elements to this story, it’s a fantasy world that has been built from scratch and as there’s so much I want to tackle, the kinks that linger need to be straightened out before I can give the story the attention it deserves in the micro aspect. In some places, these kinks are quite minor. In others, they require devoted attention because the story can’t advance without these elements being corrected. Knowing that has been one of the reasons I’ve avoided returning.
And yet, being back in it and having worked on some of these kinks, progress has already been excellent. That small dread in returning was quickly alleviated when I saw how the time away has allowed me to rectify these problems that I had left for future me to figure out. This fresh perspective has made working out these kinks so much simpler than if I had tried to persevere in the moment and forced my way into conclusions. This is why I’ll always be such an advocate for taking time away; preserving can be valuable but the growth in your perspective with time away from a project will show you new avenues and ways to flatten out kinks that sometimes pushing yourself through won’t. When you’re focused on persevering, it can be so difficult to pull back and see the story as a whole and what will strengthen it, it’s difficult to see the plotholes and problems when you’re amongst it all. Time away, de-familiarising yourself with the story actually allows you to see solutions and weak spots that are much tougher to find when you’re surrounded by the world you’ve created.
There are still things that need to be worked on, I’ll be very clear about that. I would love to say that’s everything perfect and peachy, but it isn’t. It’s closer than it was, but does any project come without its complications? Definitely not. And yet, this break from the story has allowed me to refine things in a way that I’m overjoyed about and so I’ve been able to move it forward in a way I certainly wouldn’t have been able to before my break.
The actual writing isn’t something I’ve tackled yet. I’m in the micro again, but I’m working on the story itself, not writing scenes, and maybe there’s still some dread there that I’ve got to work through but I’ll be able to do it. My hopes for this year are that I will absolutely get back into writing it again. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked on the story and an even longer time since I’ve actively written it. It’ll be interesting to see what those early drafts look like before I decided I needed to thoroughly work on the story as a whole; some of it might be charming, others might be harrowing, but at least I’ll be able to see my growth and that’s always rewarding.
Whilst my priority for now is still working on the story, I’m hoping, very soon, it’ll be time to write it out again. When that time comes, I know I’ll be grateful for the time I put in now, making it coherent and structured in a way that will make writing it so much easier.
Robyn x
R. A. Howard 