When the Magic Fades, rekindle your relationship by taking time apart

You’ve just spent the past six-months writing your manuscript. You loved it at first; it’s what got you out of bed every morning, excited to go play in the world you’ve created. Your connection with your characters has kept you engaged, and the story moving forward. Life. Is. Perfect.

Then one morning you wake up and everything’s all wrong. That loving feeling you once felt for your manuscript is gone. What happened? Now what? Do you scrap the whole thing? Start over? Put the pillow over your head and scream until you're

hoarse?

Please, do none of that. Do not set your work on fire. Breathe, and let me help you down from the edge of the roof.

First off, don’t do anything that can’t be undone. Step away from the computer! Several years ago, I found myself in this exact scenario. I had a 410-page manuscript that I was on fire about. I was producing 2,000 words a day; the story was practically writing itself. Joy and elation were my writing partners and my soul was complete.

Until it wasn’t.

My world imploded. It wasn’t anything specific, I just didn’t like the story, I wasn’t sure where it was going, and I felt I’d lost touch with my characters. I detested the entire plot and no matter how hard I tried to get around myself, and out of my own way, I couldn’t reconcile with it. Then matters were made worse when I got into my head about the whole thing. Fear and doubt were engaged. Nobody has ever been able to think their way out a situation like this, it takes calm and perspective, and I admittedly reacted poorly to the panic – and hit delete, followed by ‘save’. The entire manuscript blinked out of existence, and I instantly regretted what I’d done.

If I thought the disastrous self-talk was bad before my over-reaction, now I was really pouring on the suffering. I began to doubt my ability as a writer. And all that soul-satisfying creativity I’d felt in the beginning? My painbody convinced me it’d all been a sham; the butt of the Universe’s cruel sense of humor. An actual bullet to the foot would have been less painful.

Then, the irony of ironies: once I’d ugly cried myself out, and had nothing but defeated calm left in me, the myriad ways I could have better dealt with the moment came to me, calmly – one at a time – as if the former manuscript was chastising me from beyond for my irreversible reaction. It was a marriage that could have been saved, if I’d only treated it as such and just took a breather.

The author/manuscript relationship is as real as any human connection. The two come together naturally, often unexpectedly. They tease each other with arc possibilities and hints of conflicts they might navigate together. Those initial days of discovering one another can have a writer floating on clouds. Writer and manuscript eventually enter into a committed relationship in which they care and nurture each other. You fall in love with your manuscript and as the creator of the tale, you can’t imagine a day without touching it.

But, as happens so often in human relationships, things can start to feel stale. Less exciting. The plot gets lost. Your mind wanders to the next possible story and thoughts of the next adventure. Your mind is telling you all the things wrong with the manuscript, never once giving credit to what’s working, never suggesting what might be improved. Like catty girlfriends, your mind is urging you to leave. Just walk away.

That’s one way to deal with it. Divorce yourself from all your hard work, give up, and move on. But what if you took another path?

Walk away from your manuscript, not forever, but just for now, understanding that you will reunite (I suggest picking a date for this reunion, because ‘someday’, or ‘pretty soon’, rarely actually arrive). Give yourself not days, or weeks, but a month or two of separation with no contact. Do not think of your manuscript, don’t look at it, ponder it, edit it, or address it. Occupy your time with something else entirely. Start a new writing project, go out and prepare the garden for next season, begin a sewing project, make jam - hit that to-be-read pile with fervor! Do whatever takes you away from your manuscript so that when the two of you eventually reunite, you return with clarity.

Now that you’ve come back together, spend time getting reacquainted with one another. Reread your work from the beginning, maybe making notes in the margin, but not editing. Look for plot holes, pacing issues, character motivation, and consistency. You’re rediscovering why the two of you came together in the first place. What’s working in the relationship, and what can be improved. Is there enough attraction to continue with your author/manuscript relationship? Can your woes be remedied by the introduction of a new crisis, a side storyline, a new character? What parts can you salvage, what can be rewritten?

Perhaps, after deep introspection with one another, the best decision is to permanently split-up, and move on, and that is certainly okay. But you gave yourself time to come to that decision without panic, without fear, and without regret. This was the step I didn’t allow for myself and my manuscript’s relationship. I panicked, believed the bullshit my mind told me, bought into the self-depreciation, and blasted myself in my own foot. The manuscript is gone forever. I can’t reclaim any of it. And reflecting back, I could have saved it – if I’d given myself the time and room to do so.

So please, give your relationship with your book a chance when fear, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome set in. Don’t allow those detractors a foothold, and for the sake of your book, and your own personal sanity, don’t give up on each other until you’ve exhausted every avenue of reunion. Don’t abandon your manuscript. When the magic fades, rekindle your relationship by taking time apart.

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” - Charles R. Swindoll

~Dani