Creative fears, discipline, and working on my first novel
What has been helping me to keep going.
We all eventually reach a point where we don’t have safer, smaller, more palatable dreams to talk about. To detour or distract ourselves with. We arrive at a juncture where there is no room left for shrinking. I am here, ready to face myself and my big, itchy dreams. And so I share —
I’m working on a novel I’ve been dreaming and scheming and plotting for three years. Current title: Open Spaces.
This is a story about our most insidious obsessions, the wounds that form them, the specific people they draw us towards, and sucker that I am for happy-not-sappy endings, about a path towards healing.
I am on the final leg of building four protagonists and a plot that feels real and complicated, in pain, in need of breath, mine. Along the way, I’ve watched my own life transform (fiction is based on truth after all, but that’s a post for another day). Soon, I will begin writing the first draft.
This is the third book I will be writing. What I have learnt from the first two, each of which I spent years completing and then decided to not publish, is this: I no longer want to do it alone. Something in me collapses when I try to, and I can’t afford that anymore.
So in that spirit, I want to talk about what the process has been like so far, especially in the past couple of months. Here are some things I am understanding along the way that’s helping me to keep going.
1. It is scary to show up for the big things I want to make.
I have spent years paralyzed by the enormity of this fear, which is really multiple fears stemming from various parts of my life:
How much of my life is this going to demand and cost? What if it doesn’t work out how I want it to again and I fall further into creative despair? What else could I be doing with the time this will take? What if I realize I am terrible at this? What if I cannot do justice to these specific characters I want to write? What if this is not what I am meant to write at all? What about money? What about <insert 100 other things>?
I have not found a way to put all these fears down. But I’ve realized I don’t have to do that in one go. As I write, I get to feel through and release them one at a time, bit by bit.
2. Engaging with the Scary Creative Thing every day quietens the frustrated, unhappy part of my brain.
Yes, I have needed to show up every single day to rebuild my self-trust and quieten the Bad Voices in my mind. The louder the voices, the more self-trust may be eroded, the more we may need to show up.
It’s not easy or convenient to do this alongside actual paid work, maintaining an online presence, spending time with family, tending to friendships, medical checkups, hobbies, laundry, meal prep, movement. But perhaps, it is in this crucible of a hectic adult life that the path of a real writer is forged. Perhaps a writer must be immersed in these rapid daily rhythms, words pressing against each moment to spout. I’ve stopped waiting for it to be any other way.
3. Through my 20s, I was excellent at creating with zero external accountability. That changed.
And I hated it. I considered my ability to write and work the publication market without needing anyone to hold me accountable as an internal signal that this was natural for me, that I was meant for this.
But then I chose to grow my life bigger than my writing, to fill it with thriving relationships, other forms of art, my ever-expanding love for the natural world, for travel, and it began to feel like I had to pay a price for this expansion. The price was that I wouldn’t be a certain kind of writer anymore.
But I still wanted to be a writer, one who does things they keep dreaming of. So I’ve allowed myself to seek support — Writing groups. One on one sessions. Deadlines. And you know, showing up with that accountability has not made me feel like any less of a writer. Quite the opposite, actually. Having my process and hard work witnessed legitimises every twist and turn and hidden dark alley of this otherwise solitary journey. Who wouldn’t want that?
4. I don’t have to dismiss my dreams and ambitions just because I don’t know how to balance their weight yet.
I’ve been wobbly in my life lately. I have less energy to offer my friends, I am tired and wired and perpetually nursing some form of a migraine from too much screentime. I shut my laptop and fall into a dead sleep by 11 pm (me, who has been nocturnal from the womb!). But I remind myself that this isn’t a moral failure, especially for someone who has spent their whole life either overextending or walking a tightrope that can tip any moment. I do not need to course correct immediately.
Working on a big dream means offering it the most oxygen we have. It means less air for other dreams, other parts of ourselves and lives. A lot in our lives can actually adapt to that, including people.
It’s taken a while, but almost all my friends have now truly and fully understood where I am at. Why I ask after them less, show up less, and how that in no way means I care less. One friend recently said that she was proud of me for drawing boundaries with her that I never did before, it finally helped her understand what I needed. Another acknowledged what I had given her over the years, saying that it absolutely was my time to be selfish.
As I strap into my selfish era, I am humbled by the largess of people I’ve chosen as my own. I remember how that was my big dream for some decade and a half, to find such people and grow those relations. Having accomplished this, I know it’s time to allow myself a new big dream.
5. My art thrives when I take it seriously.
For a while now, I’ve been going through a dry period of artistic success. So many backlogged ideas and WIP projects, no publication byline in years. I’d forgotten how to treat my work like it’s going somewhere.
I am now learning that if you are backed up with a lot of unfinished work, you will not be able to enter a sustainable flow state with new projects. You will struggle to access your larger creative intuition.
So I am pushing myself to clear what’s in the pipeline, novel included.
And I must say, the good folks at CoCreateClub have been heaven-sent in helping me do this. Raju Tai and Vimal Chitra are poets and writers hosting daily sessions for other artists trying to show up for their creativity. The first time I spoke to the group about my book was the first time I told anyone who wasn’t a close friend about it. That legitimacy and feeling of not doing it alone brought me here, full-circle to this point in my journey.
If you are seeking this discipline, legitimacy, or simply some space in your life to make things, I implore you to join their next cohort. It is a lush, sacred space for artists, an altar, if you need one.
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It can take a long while for some of us to feel like we are on the creative path we need to be on. I still falter, I always might.
But for now, I’m here, working on my most incessant dreams, hoping you’re working on yours too.
💌
Soumya
Reccomendations 🧝♂️
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is the best anime I have watched in a long while. A mix of adventure, nostalgia, unlikely friendships, and a unique perspective on time, I can’t stop shouting about this to anyone who will listen.
Someone to Watch Over You by Kumi Kimura is a novella about two lonely people who keep each other company through the pandemic. It is poignant and piercing, tender, true. A book that’s going to stay with me a while.
Digibouquet is a website I came across a few months ago that allows you to design and send digital bouquets for free. During a financially strapped year, I’ve loved sending friends these gorgeously illustrated bunches of flowers with personalized notes for birthdays.
Listening to 🎵
This is a song that means a lot to one of the protagonists in my novel, so I’ve been playing it on repeat as I plot his story. It’s become a special song to me too now, and someday soon, I hope it will to you as well.
Thank you for reading 💞
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This gives me so much hope and strength.. like actual optimism and a re-taste of my self belief.. by sharing exactly how you’re holding your hand through the maze that is a wildly creative life, you’re holding our hands too. Anyone who is waiting for their first tangible project will resonate deeply with this piece, especially in the wobble and adulting you write about.
What struck me is that this feels less like a story about writing a novel and more like a story about making space for a new version of yourself. The novel seems to be arriving alongside that process rather than separate from it.