You've got this!

No real advice, just pure love and support

I hit a wall the other day.

It’s a totally normal occurrence when you’re working blind, unsure of when the breakthrough will come. Your words, your characters and your vision are the best kind of company, but writing is also an isolating, focussed activity. There are no chats by the coffee machine to alleviate the strain, no pep talks with a boss. If you also live alone, you have to leave the house for social contact, you have to ask people for support—which is (LOLz) more effort.

So, yes, I hit a wall. My bandwidth, faith and hope were all in the negative digits, and none of the usual tricks were working. Then I saw this video with poet David Whyte:

I asked myself, Where am I on my path?

My reply was a timeline and stats for the last 2-point-something years:

• March 2022: The idea comes ✨

• May-November 2022: First full draft completed 👍🏼

• January-July 2023: Second full draft done ✅

• September 2023: Another idea comes 😎

• November 2023: Completion of poetry manuscript 🍎

• January 2024: Finding flow for writing of the second novel 🤍

• Oct 2023-April 2024: Querying, sending out other submissions, etc. #thegrind

The relief was immediate, because I could clearly see that I’ve been putting in the work. No effort is wasted, this is all getting me closer to my goals. The breakthrough is going to be great when it happens, but I can only reach that moment because I do the work—and more importantly, I do the work even when I don’t feel like it.

If I am not getting any feedback from the outside world, I can get validation and encouragement from what I have already accomplished. I was so upset about not having reached my goals that I had forgotten about the process.

All this to say—you’re still here, you’re getting somewhere, even if it doesn’t feel like it. When you hit a wall, take a moment to review what you’ve already accomplished, how far you’ve come from where you started.

And if you need to be upset for a day or two, take the hit. Feel all the feels, cry, scream, hit something soft, and then get back into it.

by Adriana Palanca, April 2024