The Cycle of Lynn

I’ve been busy.

I think I can go ahead and cryptically tell you all that I’m writing a book.

A publisher reached out to me a few months ago to ask me if I’d like to write it. I know! It’s kind of like being discovered for a supermodel gig on a bus. When does this ever happen?

To those of you (absolute darlings) who have read my slim book of short stories from many moons ago and enjoyed it, I’m sorry to say this new book is not for you. It’s a non-fiction book about a super niche interest of mine that I like to post about in other places on the internet, for a similarly super niche audience, so you probably won’t want to read it.

But writing it is an absolute labour of love for me, so it’s happening. Due to a tight deadline I’m now writing for several hours a day, in addition to my full time job, and being a mom too. 2024, it’s been a MF YEAR, am I right? And we’re only halfway there!

How’s the writing going, you might ask? Similar to every other one of my projects ever, which is to say, absolutely terribly and fantastic at the same time.

My middle kid, Gal Smiley, likes to say that one of my toxic traits (among many) is that I have a firm belief that I am literally able to do anything at all I set my mind to. Glorious confidence, you might think, but it also leads frequently to disaster.

A typical timeline of a Lynn project:

Lynn believes she can do the thing, even though she’s never done it before
Lynn does a modicum of research in this area, mostly watching one or two YouTube videos
Lynn gathers a mishmash of supplies
Lynn begins project
Lynn quickly spirals into despair at her total inability to do the thing
The closest people on hand, usually her children, talk her down from the ledge
Lynn declares she is QUITTING THIS NIGHTMARE PROJECT
The closest people on hand, usually her children, sigh and stop whatever they are doing to immediately help with said project
Project gets completed in slap-dash fashion with the aid of others
Lynn declares the project a success and learns nothing

Right now with the book we are in the “spirals into despair” stage where everything I write is absolute crap and I want to throw my laptop out the window. Also: I am eating SO MUCH CHOCOLATE. At the end of this I am going to weigh 600 pounds and still be sitting on a manuscript that is 600 pounds of shit.

However, I am heartened by the fact that every writer ever, of all time, has talked about how the first draft is crap. Just loose sand chucked into a big pile, for the later purpose of being shaped into sandcastles.

So I’m clinging to that, and eating more chocolate, and drinking more tea, and plugging away. Hope you’re all out there building sandcastles – literal and figurative – as well.

4 thoughts on “The Cycle of Lynn”

Sooooooooo, how about we go over what you’ve written so far?

July 7, 2024 at 2:36 pm

I’m pretty sure I’ve said this to you before, but I love this quote: “A writer is someone for whom writing is difficult”. Also the thing about the first draft being crap is spot-on.

I say this, by the way, with full self-awareness that “writer” is not a word I would use to describe myself. But I write design documents, I write code, I write math, I write emails, I keep a journal, etc, and they all share the property that the first thing you write down typically isn’t very good, and the process of continuously refining what you started with until it shines – *that* is what writing is. To me at least. (Yes, I re-read and refine my emails, all the time. I even go back and edit Slack messages if I think of a better way to word something.)

And I love that. In fact, I’m doing it right now, with this post. I can’t *not* do it, it seems. It takes me far too long to do all these things. But I don’t care – it’s just who I am and I’m OK with that.

July 8, 2024 at 2:24 am

Lynn

I think this is an incredibly valuable skill, and one that is hard to learn. I find it hard to see exactly where things can be improved (thankfully I have a couple of awesome friends who help me with this) but more importantly, it’s hard to know when it’s “good enough” to walk away. But I totally agree that it’s the process of *editing* your work that turns someone into a real writer. I will have to put your quote on a sticky next to my computer for inspiration!

July 8, 2024 at 6:49 am