Send a Raven: Newsletter #8
Taking my writing from a coping mechanism to a career: learning how to close imperfect chapters without perfecting them (from a chronic perfectionist)
Happy December, Ravens!
This newsletter is finally going to be what I’m sure most of you actually signed up for… Writing! More specifically, how I came to selecting a (finally announced) release date for ARAC #1, but also how I managed to get to a point where I was able to select a date, at all. Considering this is my last newsletter of 2024, I figured a thinkpiece on closing chapters couldn’t be more fitting. I hope you enjoy this more personal look into my journey as an author.
Over the years, the colder months are ones that I’ve come to associate with writing; my light through the (4PM) darkness, my excuse to lock myself in my room for hours every day and still feel productive, my upper amongst the seasonal depression. The days of dreading winter slowly began to fade, and I found a new appreciation for the stillness that came with a fresh blanket of snow. But brittle grass and bare branches weren’t all that was being concealed by a fresh dusting on those December evenings, and I didn’t realize it until I woke up to the singing of sparrows on a sunny spring morning this year and thought, fuck.
Mood writing isn’t a new concept, and I thought that was what I was for a while… I was writing through the SAD(ness), wasn’t I? Wrong. I was writing through the season. But the problem with being a seasonal writer is that the seasons change, and in Canada (specifically Alberta), they change rapidly.
And for a few years, that rapid change wasn’t a problem; head down in the winter, in the clouds in the summer. It was how I managed to write an entire 600k+ word fanfic in just over 2 years, so how could it be? It only became a problem when I decided to start taking my writing seriously.
I thought my struggles during my first round of ARAC revisions were because I was no longer seasonally writing, but that was something that I had to push through if I wanted to succeed. So I did, but as I neared the end, I found a way to take it further: I would format it as an ebook! The perfect way to introduce myself as an author and not just a fanfic writer. But as that burst of motivation began to peter out, I found myself making even less progress than I had on the revisions that I still hadn’t finished. I began to think that maybe I was in over my head: a bout of self-sabotage because I was scared that my untraditional approach wouldn’t be received in the space that I so desperately wanted to occupy.
So instead of pushing through, I came up with a whole new idea that I knew would be received in the space that I so desperately wanted to occupy (hints in my Instagram highlights). But as the months got warmer, even the novelty of that began to wear off. So I decided to go back to my roots and listen to my body, and just enjoy the summer (it was around this time that I started questioning what I’ve been preaching about on here as of late: at what point does giving yourself grace become complacency?)
As the leaves began to change, naturally I felt myself being called to return to writing. So I did, but not to the new and exciting traditional project, instead back to ARAC. I was going to get this done. But as I re-immersed myself in the world that welcomed me with open arms, I realized that maybe an ebook wasn’t enough… Maybe I could just rewrite the whole thing, and solidify a place of my own to occupy.
On came another burst of ambition as I discovered the world of retellings that fizzled even quicker. My dark nights alone in my room were no longer being productively spent on my laptop, but instead endlessly scrolling on my phone. It was at this point that my sister suggested that maybe my lack of motivation had nothing to do with the time of year, or what I was working on: maybe it was simply because I was no longer writing for myself.
That one hit hard, because it seemed like it was the only possible explanation for the endless editing loop I’d found myself in. But how do I continue writing for myself while attempting to forge a career dependant on others? It was a question that I only felt I could answer by working my way through it, so I did. I spent the next year making minuscule progress, and I began to feel hopeless; like I would never wrap up this book, never write the sequel that hundreds of people are (so patiently) waiting for, and that I would never publish anything independent. I wasn’t cut out for it. I didn’t have the discipline.
Discipline?
It was the first time I felt myself truly understanding that my writing had nothing to do with moods or seasons, and everything to do with discipline; structure and scheduling, because I fucking want this. And it was an understanding that didn’t come in the stillness of November, or the breeze of October. It was one that came in the warmth of May.
It was the warmth of May that wrapped its arms around me and whispered in my ear the answer that I’d been searching for all along: that I was never writing for myself, but I also wasn’t writing for anyone else. What I was writing for was to escape reality, and as time passed and seasons changed, reality slowly became something that I no longer felt a need to escape.
When I dove head-first into this universe, reality was the warmth of May that had stolen my best friend when I needed her the most. The warmth of May had been iced over by the hand of death. The warmth of May was when I decided that I preferred the chill of December.
Since having the revelation this past May that my writing has been a years-long coping mechanism, I’ve reached the final stage in my uniquely disguised grief. The words finally flow no matter what season I try to write them in, and the motivation is no longer contingent on solitude. I will wrap up this book. I will write the sequel that hundreds of people are waiting for. And I will publish something independent. Because I’m not a seasonal writer, I’m an author.
