My emotions have been a rollercoaster today. One minute I’m as low as you can get; the next I’m scaling a metaphorical Mount Everest in my mind’s eye. This morning, I awoke a right old misery guts. I huffed and sighed, declaring myself an absolute failure, as self-pity and sweeping assumptions of my abilities flooded every blood vessel.

This low mood was largely down to my writing abilities. Or, more accurately, my perceived lack of said-abilities. The catalyst, I first assumed, could be traced back to an essay which I wrote for my website, which I’d dedicated the better part of five hours to penning the previous day. At the time of completion, I was pretty chuffed with the sense of accomplishment its completion gave me. I’d really pushed myself to formulate my thoughts, and couldn’t quite believe I’d gotten all those thorny and confusing ideas out of my mind and onto the page. Yet when I read back what I’d written this morning, I was convinced the entire thing was a steaming pile of pretentious hogwash that made next to no sense.

Being the eternal drama queen that I am, I dedicated much of my morning commute to asking myself out loud if I was wasting my time with all this “writing malarkey.” I just don’t seem cut out for it, as much as I wish I was. All that thinking and revising is a right old faff. Maybe I don’t have the stomach for it after all.

For much of today, I’ve felt lost, directionless, and overwhelmed by the uncertainty of such a supposed revelation. If writing wasn’t my thing after years of dedication, then what was? What craft could I possibly master to keep me fulfilled? Was it too late to take up the piano? Perhaps there’s still time to become a grand painter.

To cut a long story short, the panic didn’t last too long. I arrived home this evening and decided to have another stab at writing. Maybe if I just had another go, the frustration and upset would subside. Returning to the source of the pain has helped me in the past, so I figured it made sense to give that another go before seriously contemplating purchasing an instrument and some brushes.

Fiction was on the schedule for tonight, as is always the case on a Monday. I’d barely glanced at my Synthetic Empire notes since the previous Wednesday, so a return to that world was long overdue. The last time I’d worked on it, I was analysing my completed opening chapter. I’d found some issues with it, that made me realise a heavy rewrite would be needed sooner or later. The whole thing was too abstract and tonally off. It wasn’t grounded enough for my liking. That realisation, I think, scared me away from it, so much so, I contemplated cancelling tonight’s session. Perhaps a movie and some popcorn would have been a better alternative.

Thinking about it now, perhaps my hesitance to crack on with the book probably played a significant part in my post-Sunday mood. My writing confidence had hit a new low after Wednesday’s self-assigned feedback. It boiled down to the fact that I didn’t like the execution of this story in a novel format. It wasn’t so much a case that I felt a novel was a bad fit for it, but more that I didn’t know how to write it in this medium. I’d put in the work to bring it to life, but I hated the way my words were coming out. I’d been feeling low, insecure, and doubtful ever since last Wednesday, but instead of addressing it, I did what I often tend to do: I closed down Scrivener, ignored it for a few days, then threw an inevitable paddy when I finally got around to writing something on the weekend. It wasn’t the essay I was mad at; it was just the nearest thing to blame as my self-doubt took ahold.

With this discovery, I decided that tonight I had to address the anxieties head-on. I hated that opening chapter. The entire thing was fueled purely on vibes and mystery. It didn’t slot in with the type of story I wanted to tell. Quinn shouldn’t have been knocking about in some virtual reality for the first 5,500 words of her story. She needed to be interacting with the real world. I needed her to awaken in a cold, sterile, concrete cell, not some colorful nursery made up of code.

I also needed to gut all the stuff surrounding the enigmatic Nanny character. Don’t get me wrong, I love a whimsical elderly figure who disrupts my plots, but this wasn’t the time or place. She was a sweet, strange character, but she didn’t belong in this narrative, so gone she was.

All that stuff with Izzy that I initially said seemed pointless? Well I’ve decided to drag her to the forefront of the chapter. She was going to serve a purpose after all. The development and destruction of her and Quinn’s relationship would be pivotal in triggering Quinn’s story. I wanted to communicate the innocence of the Synthetic Subjects (my name for the droids in this story) throughout this opening section. At first, I figured this would solely be Quinn’s job, but now I realize that having a secondary character in the mix could communicate this much better. What if Izzy was the sweet, silly classmate that Quinn befriends during those early days in the learning cells? What if they don’t speak at first, yet a budding friendship grows through cheeky exchanges during their lessons and whispers about who they are and where they came from during nighttime chats in their cell? These are two droids who’ve woken up in a strange place designed to indoctrinate and condition them before being shipped to the homes they are destined to serve in. Amongst the horrors of their situation, their friendship could be the heart and soul, like two kids playing together, unaware of the horrors awaiting them.

With all this in mind, I started to do what I promised I wouldn’t: rewrite chapter one. I relocated all that I’d written the previous week to the “shelved” folder and proceeded to draft out a new outline for this chapter. It would be the story of Quinn and Izzy: two synthetic humanoids who found themselves in a vast, conditioning facility. They’d befriend one another, endure a callous form of punishment when their rebellious nature collided with the guards, then lose one another in the inevitable redistribution to their new homes. Izzy’s fleeting time in this story wouldn’t serve as a shaggy dog tale; it would become the very catalyst that drives Quinn to question who she is. Izzy would be the temporary figure who inadvertently kickstarts this entire saga.

With the notes complete, I jumped for joy. I had a chapter outline that felt structured, meaningful, poetic, and complete. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. There’s a purpose behind the idea. It felt like a short story tucked within a larger narrative, one that could feed into the next chapter and get this tale moving forward. It had shape, it made me emotional, and it contained depth.

Now here I am, beaming at myself for actually addressing the thing that was making me a proper grumpy guts earlier. I’d been ignoring the problem for days, forgetting that turning a blind eye isn’t the way to fix these things. Yes, my first attempt at chapter one was a sour bag of dog plop, but that doesn’t mean all my work is fecal by design (at least I hope it isn’t). With a proper good think and a deeper assessment, I managed to iron out the issues and reshape it into something that’s actually more in line with the sort of story I’m dreaming to tell.

Trial and error is part of the creative process. Not everything I write is going to work first time, and that’s okay. Writing rubbish leads to self-reflection; that self-reflection should lead to analysis, then rewrites. As nice as it would be to hit the jackpot on the first attempt, it’s never going to happen. But that’s fine. We all have to start somewhere, even if that somewhere makes you temporarily contemplate rushing out to buy a piano.

Anyhow, now that I’ve figured out how to make this chapter relevant and exciting thanks to giving it a structure (something I probably should have done in the first place), it’s time to actually start writing the damn thing.

Who knows, maybe this time tomorrow, I’ll be crying again because it’s descended into more vibes and mystery.

Nah, let’s try and be positive. I like this outline. It has potential.

Let’s get this written up!