Miss Cameron rewrote and rewrote Sing Sweet Nightingale about a million times before and after she got her publishing deal. Miss Maas originally wrote Throne of Glass as an adult novel and literally cut thousands of words from the novel's original 250K. I haven't dived into Miss Maas's revision journey as much but from what I gather, her revisions were no less intense.
These two ladies would never be where they are today if they hadn't given themselves permission to suck. If they hadn't finished those first drafts, we'd never have the above mentioned novels. I don't know about the rest of you, but both novels are so good. I'm still reading Sing Sweet Nightingale but I'm not worried about loving it. Of course, I absolutely adore the Throne of Glass series, which happens to be one of my all time favorite high fantasy series ranked right up there with Tolkien. Oh yes, I love it that much. I'm not comparing the two but I love them both and will end up rereading them more than once in my life. They're both among my go-to high fantasy series.
Now to my point. I sat down and wrote for about an hour yesterday before allowing my sick self to nap and I fell into it. I was absolutely elated. I told myself it would be what it would be. I couldn't stop it from being a first draft. So I wrote. The important thing here is that I fell right into it (and it's been too long since that's happened). I was drawn into the story. I was there in that scene. Visualizing it wasn't difficult at all because I was there with my MC. I was in both character's minds. Any questions that popped up were answered seconds later. And that was wonderful.
The change? I gave myself permission to suck. Not in those words but basically, yes. That was it. Now why did I bother talking about the above authors? Because they give me hope that out of my suckiness, I can produce something amazing. Someday.
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