I’m starting a new collaboration with another writer and my insecurity alarms are BLARING. The fact is when you’re beginning a project, you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re basically stumbling around in the dark, looking for the path. Whenever you’re in the dark, you feel vulnerable, uncertain, insecure.

I know, after decades of writing, that projects begin with uncertainty—and that making friends with insecurity and exploration is the best way to proceed. Yet, I think there’s a space of exploration where I believe one path has promise and another doesn’t. I find myself in the situation with this collaboration where I can’t just turn away and say, oh this isn’t working. I have to sit in the uncertainty and take time to see where the exploration is taking me.

One of my main ways of maintaining my sanity is going with the flow. If something isn’t working, I find ways to step away or take a different path. My second piece for the collaboration interested me, but I had no interest in going back to it, so I gave myself permission to move on. After I wrote a third piece (and was dissatisfied with that too), I had to make a choice. I could empower the feelings of dissatisfaction or acknowledge and affirm that I’m in exploration—and unhinge myself from the need to “approve” of my first steps in the process.

At the same time, I found some free writes I had done inspired by random words, so I paired my third experimentation with a new piece. I allowed myself to write something I didn’t like, then found my way to the heart. I’m still not “convinced,” but the path got clearer—AND I went back to that second piece I was dissatisfied with and dove into building it out.

What I love about life is that the challenges don’t end. If we keep putting ourselves on the creative path, we will continue to have opportunities to affirm ourselves and affirm our creative process. This is how we empower our voices, this is how we build a durable relationship to our artistry.

Onward!

—K.

IN THE MIX

Here’s where I stand with the writing work that’s In the Mix.

• YA NOVEL: Incredibly, my YA novel is still on hold. I was scheduled to receive edits in February, now I’m rounding out August with only 70 pages of edits sent. I’ve been practicing faith in divine timing in my life. So while I’m concerned about when the book is going to be complete and when we’re going to get started on book 2, I’m full of appreciation that I didn’t have to struggle with the edits while I was burnt out earlier in the year. We’ll see when the rest of the edits come through.

• PICTURE BOOK: The (potentially) final draft of my picture book is with my agent and I’m waiting to hear if she’s ready to shop it around to publishers or if she thinks it needs another edit. While I was going back to see how long the draft took me to develop, I noticed that I had written the first draft of another picture book at the same time as the one I’m finishing now. In keeping with the theme of this post, I determined that it wasn’t working and ignored it. Well, I read it again and really liked the core of it, so I did an edit and I’ve decided to share it with my agent, as soon as we complete the development of the current picture book.

• CHAPTER BOOK: The chapter book is still sitting in outline and ready to be written. I’ve been reading other chapter books to get a sense of structure. As soon as I finish working on a few tasks that I have to wrap up, I’ll turn to writing this.

• CREATIVE COLLABORATIONS: As referenced in the post, one of my creative collaborations is underway. The second is under consideration. The first is a long-term project. I look forward to sharing it once we finalize it.

• MICROFICTION: I submitted my microfiction but haven’t heard back. Time will tell if they want to publish it.