Today’s post will be a collection of thoughts reflecting on the more recent months of my writing journey.

When I started – over 10 years ago – I just did. I gave things a try, not knowing whether I would continue or delete the file the next day. As a result, I had the luxury of producing word salad of horrendous quality, but also the joy of unfiltered creativity.

As the months and years passed, I learned more and my skills improved. With it came more serious intentions, and thus, I knew I would need to go up in quality. Finishing the first book took five years, and during that time, I learned a lot.

In all honesty, I’m probably nowhere near being truly good at this whole writing thing. I read around 20 books a year, and I often think “I would wish to be able to spark such emotions in my readers one day”. And at the same time, I often think it’s way beyond my skill level. And way beyond my way of thinking. As I said many times, I’m, deep inside, a very logical person. But art isn’t always logical. And overthinking slows me down.

As I worked on book two, feedback would often make me feel overwhelmed. I wanted to improve my story, but seeing the work that needs to be done was scary. Worse, I often overthink the individual comments. Overanalyzing and then feeling like I’m nowhere near where I would want to be is a common situation for me, one I’m not sure how to escape. I can’t see the simple solution that’s probably hiding in plain sight.

Especially editing dialogue seems to be a weak spot. Despite a decade of writing, I have yet to develop a good feeling for this aspect – to make sure the dialogue is dynamic, that it’s not oversaturated by tags, but also clear who’s talking; to make sure it’s not just a bunch of talking heads without repeating the same gestures.

Likewise, I’ve repeatedly overthought feedback about showing more emotions and thoughts from characters. I might end up losing myself in thinking too much about what the character might feel like, only to get nothing that seems good enough – yet, in other passages, just a couple of words have managed to get a good reception from a beta reader.

Often, I feel like I’m striving for perfection I don’t have the skills for, and that can be quite crippling. I feel that, after having written roughly a million words for this project, I should be better. I should understand things more.

It feels quite embarrassing to admit that I have “to do” notes that are over two years old that I haven’t been able to tackle, despite being very simple. Minor issues I’ve overthought to hell and back, twice, yet failed to find a simple solution. Scenes where I’ve been swinging from one extreme to another, failing to find the good midpoint.

By now it’s been five years since I finished the first book. And I’m still struggling with the second. I’m believing (for the third time) that the story itself is where I want it to be, but the quality is lacking. And even though it’s much better than my beginnings, and I dare to say better than the first book, it still feels like I’m nowhere near where I should be, 10 years down the line.

Overthinking is a lifelong curse of mine, but nowhere else in my life has it manifested as strongly as in my writing. Sometimes, I wish I could care a bit less, to not push myself to unrealistic standards, at least for the time being. Because judging my today’s skill by skill level I might have 10 further years down the line isn’t fair, yet I can’t escape it…

Well, that’s it for my ramblings today. But I take the chance of the unceremonious anniversary to thank everyone who helped me on the journey, be it by feedback or advice. Some of you have been in my life for over 7 years… and I appreciate it. Especially when you’ve been kinder to me than I am to myself, at least where writing is concerned.