What drives me bonkers is that I'd write something, decide it really isn't going in a way I want it to, and start over. When I do push through all the way to the end and then go back to edit it, I still end up tossing all that writing for something else.
I really blame the writing of some 80s era cartoons for some of this. Some of the writing for Voltron, a show my brother really watched but I was kind of peripherally involved with, has shown up in earlier drafts of some of my stories. When I go back and edit and I say "Holy crap does this sound bad! Where did this come from?" I find out weeks later watching some random YouTube video a clip from Voltron or Star Blazers and realize the origin of that dialogue.
For an example, this particular snippet of dialogue took me about 3 weeks to write to where it's in this form. Obviously it's still a work in progress, so it'll likely look different than at this point, but at least I like the flow and the direction of the dialogue.
“Hmmph.” My sister sat down next to me and stared out over the pond.
If she thought I was going to overshare, which was the sure sign of a guilty conscience, she was going to be waiting for quite a while. Still, I figured I’d lay out the one thing that Linna likely most feared. “I’m going to have Zarg do it.”
“Do what?” She tore her eyes off the far end of the pond to look me over.
“The investigation that needs to happen. I’m not an idiot, you know, and I’m quite aware I’m not healthy enough to do it myself.”
Linna’s face twisted; not quite disgust, and not quite disapproval. “And you’re going to let her do it.”
“Yes. She knows a lot about the Cult, after all, and people always underestimate her.”
My sister involuntarily glanced over at the slumbering Neve.
“I already cleared her,” I supplied. “What about your Draenei friend?”
“She’s safe as well.” Linna had a long pause as her face went through a myriad of emotions.
“You’re thinking of that place, aren’t you.”
Her expression settled on anguish. “Card…”
“They don’t know her like they do me, so it’s safer for her to do it.” I felt strangely at peace with that admission. I’d always done things myself, and relinquishing the responsibility for investigating my curse was a difficult step to take. It was also going to be quite dangerous, dealing with the Cult of the Damned, but if there was one thing I was confident about it was that Zargala could handle herself. “If you get a chance, can you carry a note from me to Mathias? He deserves to know about what happened here.”
“Yes.” Another pause. “I don’t want to lose you.”
I nodded. “Nor I you. But you have to trust me.”
“You don’t make it easy.”
“My name wouldn’t be Cardwyn if it was.” I looked around. “Carys should be back soon.”
“I told her she could come back when I was done talking to you.”
“I bet you didn’t make sure the other two weren’t snooping.”
Linna stared at me for a moment. “Shit,” she blurted and split.
I heard her footfalls fade, then I turned my focus back to the pond. “Okay, Lewys, I know you’re out there. Come on out.”
There was a rustle in the brush, and a very guilty-looking nephew emerged.
I raised an eyebrow as a smirk crept across my lips. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to explain what we were talking about.”
“But…”
“Sometime later, but not now.” I patted the ground next to me. “Sit.”
He dragged his feet a bit, but Lewys eventually sat down. “Take my other rod,” I told him. “I loaned it to Briganaa, but she’s not here right now.”
Lewys picked up the fishing rod and began casting with me. “Aunt Linna was really mad at you,” he finally offered.
“Yeah, I know.”
“How come?”
“Why does everybody think I’m going to tell them that?” I sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you this much: she was scared.”
“Scared? Aunt Linna?”
“Yes, she was. She was scared of what I might do, because I sometimes do things without thinking. And in our little talk that you so conveniently eavesdropped on, I assured her I wasn’t going to do anything like that.”
“Oh.” He made a face. “This is all hard.”
“Yeah, life is hard. Even when you’re all grown up.”
"That doesn't seem fair."
"It isn't. But I'll let you know if it ever does turn out fair; I think I'd like that every once in a while."
I suppose I ought to have saved an earlier draft to show you what I wasn't keeping, but still I wanted to share a bit about the difficulty I face in writing. It can be a lonely and humbling process, and agonizing over something as simple as this is a guaranteed way to drive me nuts.
But the thing is, I derived some inspiration from the fact that many famous people --geniuses, really-- agonize over their craft in their own way.
Here's a short clip of Maximillian Schell and Leonard Bernstein discussing Beethoven and what made him a genius.
Speaking of geniuses...
The fact that Beethoven struggled and agonized over the creation process makes me feel better about my own struggles. Not because I think I'm a genius, but because people of Beethoven's stature struggled to come up with their works of art. And here I am, just struggling to put words on a page that made even a smidgen of sense.
So many other modern creators, particularly those who loudly proclaim their own genius, loudly trumpet the ease at which they make their creations. Yet I think it is more humbling to see the real struggles people have --and what they have overcome-- that inspires me to try harder. In that case the real genius is perseverance.
#Blaugust2026
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