Writing bears many challenges. The hardest of them to accept is the feeling like you’ve missed something that should’ve been obvious.

And I’ve been going through several cycles of this since I started writing. It’s probably one of the hardest obstacles to overcome for me, one that can often make me feel miserable. It typically goes like this: I go through two or three drafts, things seem to be on a good track, and I start the beta reading cycle. The first one or two go well but the third comes up with something that, when I think about it, should’ve been very obvious since the start.

The result? A lot of time spent thinking why I didn’t see it before and why I only did when someone else pointed it out to me. Especially when, after some thinking, I can see how it would improve the story. It becomes a strong fuel for imposter syndrome – because a real writer would see something this obvious without having to be shown, right?

What could be the cause – well, that’s quite a question. I, admit, don’t really know. I do suspect that a good part of it comes from two major reasons: being too familiar with the story in so many versions that it might lead to missing things in all the versions that came and versions that could be, and spending a lot of time in the story without breaks and distance.

As for the first part, I know that many times, I did keep in mind some discarded ideas, some events and characters I cut, and so on. These were part of the process and helped to shape the story towards what it is, but they’re something that can hold me back – a reader seeing the story for the first time doesn’t know this and is unburdened by this knowledge. I admit I’ve been in situations where, when editing a scene, I had to backtrack a fair amount to remind myself of the current version, because sometimes, the past versions were more ingrained in my memory. Sometimes because I had some attachment to an element (be it a character, scenery, or a bit of dialogue), sometimes simply because the past version existed for much longer.

The second part comes from a natural desire to keep working on the story, which might lead to a situation where one draft leads to another without a chance to “reset” the progress and clear my mind of the discarded elements. This might be even trickier to deal with – even in the time when I pretty much haven’t written anything (such as the time from June 2023 to September 2024), my mind was still often thinking about how to fix the issues. I wasn’t writing, but I didn’t let myself to clear my mind completely enough to come back with a fresh perspective.

Thus, in the pile of discarded ideas, potential changes, past and present feedback, I guess it’s way too easy to lose track. Unfortunately, coming up with an idea to deal with this is quite the problem. Reading through my drafts several times seems to bear the risk of making me even more blind to the obvious as I would get way too familiar with the current version, but not doing enough reads risks missing even simpler inconsistencies. Taking breaks between drafts could work – if I can make sure to get my mind elsewhere, even in the writing area. How? That’s something I have to find out. In past, I’ve been giving some energy to minor side stories I could eventually use, so maybe that could be a solution to consider.

So, at this point, I’ll welcome your experience. Have you faced issues where you couldn’t see issues – sometimes even larger ones – until they were pointed out? How did you improve your awareness of problems in your own story and get rid of your own bias?