So, I’m here interviewing Doug Hulick. Doug is a fine writer and a successful one who I've been aware of since I was first published. He's an interesting guy and what happened to him is well worth understanding.
Unashamedly, one topic I'll be focusing on is how after beginning a very successful trilogy, Doug was unable to deliver book 3 into the hands of his eager readers.
Whether there's any insight to be gained here into other even more famous authors who haven't managed to produced book three of their trilogy or book 6 of their septology is not something I can say. Clearly, everyone's struggle is unique to them, but at the very least, it should help anyone with an empathy deficit to try a bit harder to understand that such events are not all about them, nor some kind of crime committed against their right to read.
This is a long interview because, much to the annoyance of many, this is a complicated business full of nuance and also experience that most of us have been lucky enough not to have had to contend with.
I hope you read it all, but if not, three takeaway points are:
i) There are no short easy answers.
ii) Doug is 6'7" and rapier vs rapier he'd likely mess you up.
iii) Among Thieves is a fine read whether or not you decide to follow on to book 2.
Back in 2011, when my first book was published, I had
my eye on the other new fantasy authors who were mentioned either along side me,
or (more often) without me, as people to watch.
Top among those names were Peter Orullian with The
Unremembered (look out for his upcoming anthology, Unbroken, in which I
have a Snorri short story) and Elspeth Cooper with Songs of the
Earth. But rising, seemingly out of nowhere, selling his book hand over
fist, was Douglas Hulick with Among Thieves, book one of a
planned trilogy titled Tales of the Kin.
Since Doug’s debut book came out 4 months before mine,
I watched his progress closely, trying to figure out what to expect and what to
do. I had no idea what being an author was going to be like. But if it went
well, then it was going to look rather like whatever Doug had going on.
I did, of course, read Among Thieves. And
it’s a fine book. The closest I can think of to its vibe is The Lies of Locke
Lamora. It has that same post-medieval Venice feel to it – minus the canals,
and the fighting is done with rapier and dagger, and for reasons of style and
speed people don’t bother with armour. That and the fact they’re out there
living their lives in the city.
The focus of this interview, however, is not on the
books but on the process of writing them. Among Thieves was
followed three years later by book 2: Sworn in Steel. And … then
… nothing. In 2017, rather than leave his readers in limbo, Doug announced that
book 3: Court of Lies would not be published. He explained the
reasons and made his apologies.
I’m hoping, with nine years for the dust to settle, to
revisit the matter and see what insights are to be had.
So, after that really long intro:
Hi Doug. Three questions to start us off:
How long did it take you to write Among
Thieves?
Hi Mark. Thanks for reaching out and asking me to
discuss this. Hopefully my experiences will be of interest to some, and maybe
even a bit enlightening here and there. So, with that said....
I started AMONG THIEVES while my wife was doing a
month-long visiting medical residency in Juneau, Alaska. I was there as well,
and with my days basically free of work and any other responsibilities, I
decided it was time to get started on the book I'd been meaning to write for
ages. This was back in 1995, I think? I started off by re-reading three other
novels I felt captured the feel of what I wanted to go for and outlined their
pace and structures. Then I outlined my first three chapters and got started.
Now, I don't want people to think this was an
an-going, or even constant, process. Once we returned from Alaska, we had to
prepare for a move from Illinois to Minnesota, find a place to live, and so on
and so forth. A lot of the groundwork on that fell to me. Likewise, afterwards
we had to get settled in, I had to look for work - all the usual things. So my
time to write was sporadic at best. Then we had our first child. I was the
stay-at-home parent, so things got even busier. Add in another move, another child,
hobbies, life, and...well, you get the picture.
Nor was the writing a straight line. A couple years
after getting settled, I found a writer's group called The Wyrdsmiths. I
auditioned, got in, and got ready to have them begin reading what I'd written
of my novel so far. Except I wasn't happy with what I had. So I started
re-writing my draft from the beginning as I handed it out to the group a bit at
a time. (In case it isn't clear, I'm more than a wee bit of a perfectionist.) I
don't know when exactly this was, but it basically meant I began a complete re-write
part way through my initial draft.
I can't tell you when I typed "The End." Nor
do I remember how long I spent on revisions after that. My default answer to
how long it took is ten years, but that's ten years of starts, stops,
interruptions, and so on. But yeah, I didn't set any land-speed records with my
first novel.
Did you think it might get you a book
deal?
Honestly, I didn't know if my book would sell or not.
Besides being a perfectionist, I'm also my own worst critic. I knew the writing
was good, but the overall book? I'd been so close to it for so long, I couldn't
appreciate the whole thing. All I could see were the flaws. So I didn't really
know whether an agent, let alone a publisher, would bite. In fact, I was so
uncertain I started writing a completely different book - an urban fantasy set
in the Twin Cities in Minnesota - in case my first novel didn't sell. I didn't
want to start working on a sequel to a book that might never see the light of
day. (In retrospect, this was a mistake on my part, but at the time I thought
it made sense.)
As it turned out, the first agent who read AMONG
THIEVES signed me, and the first publishing house he showed it to bought it. So
once it was finally out the door, things moved pretty fast. Which surprised me,
since most of the stories you hear from aspiring authors involve queries no one
responds to, manuscripts languishing on agents' and editors' desks, otherwise
good books that are never picked up for market reasons, and other minor horror
stories. I'd steeled myself for a long slog. When the book sold right out of
the gate, I was a bit stunned.
Did that early success have any impact on
you?
I don't know if I saw it as success? Or at least, not
how I'd learned to judge success. It was picked up in a very basic deal, with a
standard (read: small) first-time author advance. It was being released as a
mass market paperback, rather than as a trade paperback or even a hardcover.
Marketing support was the standard single mention in a trade magazine by the
publisher. The only book signings that happened were ones I arranged, and then
only at two stores. So it wasn't as if my book was being treated any different
than hundreds of others my publisher was putting out that year. As I saw it, I
was a debut author hoping to shoot for mid-list author status (if I was lucky).
The first hint that things might be developing a bit differently was when my US publisher sold foreign rights at auction in the UK before the book was even published. And even then, the only reason I knew it had gone to auction was because my British editor mentioned it in passing during our initial phone conversation. Other foreign rights sales followed, but again, word trickled in sporadically, usually by e-mail, with minimal information. So while I knew it was uncommon to sell foreign rights right out of the gate for a debut fantasy novel, I didn't realize how unusual it was in terms of how I was performing.
Someone described the book at that time as a
"sleeper" that rose up and surprised everyone. I think that's a good
way to put it. In retrospect, I now realize AMONG THIEVES performed far better
and had more success than I had any right to expect, and that I was extremely
fortunate it struck a chord with as many people as it did. But at the time I
believed the book was doing just a bit of above average in the grand scheme of
things, and so I blithely continued on as if nothing exceptional was happening.
Your attitude to the possibility of
success mirrors both my practice and advice to others. I didn’t write a sequel
to Prince of Thorns until I had a book deal for a trilogy. And if my
opinion is canvassed on the subject by other writers, I tell them to let their
unsold book 1 lie and write a new book. That way they have two things to
interest agents/publishers/the audience. Writers that forge ahead with book 5
of a series when between zero and half a dozen people read the first … well,
they’re not wasting their time if they’re having fun … but if they hope for
success, they’ve got better odds trying again.
It sounds as if your lack of awareness of
quite how well you were doing should have insulated you from a lot of the
‘expectation pressure’ that might have been associated with the second book.
How did the experience of writing book 2 differ from that of writing book 1? You
spoke about your perfectionism. But you did manage to call Among Thieves
finished and move on to something else. And whilst the three years taken to get
Sworn in Steel to the shelves wasn’t the book-per-year industry goal, it
wasn’t an unreasonable wait either.
I think the biggest challenge I had with book 2 (SWORN IN STEEL) was figuring out how to write it.
Let me explain:
I'd written my first book, yes, but that had been over
the leisurely pace of a decade. That gives you a lot of time to fiddle, back
track, re-write, play with plot, and so on. In other words, lots of time to
indulge my perfectionist bent. By the time AT went out the door, I'd tweaked it
to death, all with no consequences. I could take as long as I liked because no
one was waiting on it.
Now, with the sale of my book and a contract for two
more, I suddenly had a deadline. I'm horrible with deadlines. My entire college
career had largely been me sitting at the computer banging out papers the night
before they were due - and even then, a fair number got extensions or were
handed in late. The idea of producing around one hundred thousand words in
twelve to eighteen months (I had extra time between the signing of the contract
and the initial release of book 1) sounded doable on paper, and even in my
head. But the reality? That was less rosy.
See, now I had to do what I had done over ten years in
less than two. "Among Thieves" was the first book I'd ever written,
so it's not as if I'd had a chance to get the format down or figure out my
writing rhythm over the course of a couple trunk novels. I was, in a very real
sense, jumping in cold when it came to writing a book in a limited time frame.
And what's worse? I didn't even know what the next book was going to about. I
mean, I'd set myself a few possible roads to follow in the first book, but
there wasn't a direct line running from the first book to the second (or even
third) in my head. I had envisioned the Tales of the Kin as an on-going
project, with each book dealing with its own main story, and the background
imperial plot unfolding over a longer course of time. It was never meant to be
a trilogy in my head - rather, I saw it as a series of inter-related books with
a connecting thread that would, eventually, be tied off somewhere down the
line.
Ambitious? Yes. Probably overly so. But that was my
initial vision. And while the second book did build on the first, it took a
while for me to figure out how I was going to do that. There were a couple
false starts, but I finally found the plot. However, I'm a slow writer, so any
puzzling or changes on my part tended to bog things down even more.
Also, by that time, I'd sold in enough foreign markets and heard enough low-level buzz that I knew I was hitting harder than your average debut. So there was some pressure, both from the outside world and in my own head. As the deadline grew closer, my stress increased. My editor and publisher were incredibly understanding and supportive, but that didn't change the fact that not only did I have a US publisher waiting on me, but also UK, German, Russian, etc. ones as well. In the end, the deadline got extended several times, and I grew increasingly stressed about my word count and the story's progress. By the time I sent the manuscript off, there was enough of a rush to get the book to market that my publisher had me do both the revisions and the copy edits at the same time. But it did get done, and did finally hit the shelves. Except now I had to turn around and start writing another book almost immediately
You're right that the standard turn around is a book a
year in our field. That isn't typical for every genre or type of writing, but
the model (and expectations) in our corner of the publishing world are built
around it (unless you're a huge name). I know my sales numbers for the second
book took a hit due to the long gap between titles. Readers have been
conditioned to a one year release schedule in the fantasy and sci-fi realm, and
any break in that pattern can cost an author momentum. SiS did well, but not
near the numbers of AT. And I lost the interest of at least one foreign
publisher, meaning they canceled the rights for that and subsequent books as a
result. So it did have a direct impact.
So yes, a three-year gap wasn't horrible, but I could
see the effect it had on my career. Plus, the mental pressure of failing to hit
my deadline time after time after time, while other writers I knew were hitting
theirs (or even handing manuscripts in early), took a big toll on me. Combine
that with the stress of my non-writing life at the time and other obligations,
and it all meant that I staggered into book 3 already worn down and mentally
exhausted. I think I took a whole week off between sending the final version of
book 2 in before I felt compelled to start on book 3.
The drop off you experienced between book
1 and book 2 was actually not that bad. 57% of readers followed through into King
of Thorns, which came out a year after Prince of Thorns. 42% of
readers followed through into Sworn in Steel from Among Thieves,
despite the three-year gap. I think if you beat 50%, you’re doing pretty well,
and you came close despite the wait.
A fairly recent fantasy book that got a
big push but wasn’t very well received only had 14% follow through into book 2,
despite the gap being just one year.
I understand that it felt much worse than
it was though, given the circumstances.
How much actual writing were you doing in
those three years it took to bring Sworn in Steel to the shelves? Were
you generating tons of words and throwing tons of words away? Were you writing
just a handful of words a day? Were you sitting staring at a screen and finding
no way forward. Or were you avoiding the whole thing for long periods because
it had become a burden and a torment?
How much of book three did you write, and
how long did it take to admit defeat?
I appreciate your running the numbers on the
follow-through sales. And you're right, at the time it didn't feel like it was
generating the kind of sales or interest I might have been hoping for. But by
that point, I was already fighting Book 3. Anything short of a huge splash on
the second book's part wouldn't have registered with me - not out of ego, but
because I felt I was behind the eight ball. I'd missed an opportunity to build
on the first book by hitting the "traditional" industry release
schedule. Add to that the fact that most of my writing peers at that time
(people who had sold their first books around the same time I had) were getting
their books in on or near their deadlines, and I felt like I was either falling
short or playing catch up. (Nobody was saying this to me, of course - it was
just something I kept beating myself up with.)
As for writing Sworn in Steel, I honestly don't
remember my process for that book - it's all a bit of a blur now. I know it
took me a while to even figure out what the book was going to be about, and
there were a couple of false starts. I tried to write most days (I was raising
two young boys at the time, so scheduling could be chaotic), and there were a
good number of scrapped words and scenes. I'm neither the most efficient nor
fastest writer, so "words written vs words retained" tends to be a
disturbingly unpleasant ratio. Nor was it a straight shot - I spent a fair
amount of time either trying to figure out what came next or circling back to
change or adjust things.
So while I got my second book done in two years, it
was a grueling slog. By the time I was done, I was mentally and
emotionally exhausted. Nor was I happy with the final product. As I said, the
revisions and copy editing had been done in one go. They're usually separate
processes, but my publisher had wanted to get the book out quickly after all
the delays, so the two got compressed into a single step. That means I had a
bit of a divided brain when I went through SiS's manuscript, since I was jumping back and
forth between word-level edits and story-level rewrites. It was awful. I ended up missing a number of things I would have normally addressed.
I recall telling another writer after Sword in Steel
came out that I hated every other word in the book. That's hyperbole, of
course, and speaks more to my mental state at the time than anything else. I
certainly wouldn't say that about the book now. But it gives you an idea of the
place I was inhabiting when I turned to Book 3.
I jumped directly into Book 3 right after getting
things wrapped up with Sword in Steel. As I said earlier, I think I took maybe
a week off? (Though I suppose it wasn't really time off because I knew I needed
to get to work soon.)
I'd had an idea in my head as to the structure of the
third book for several years - I wanted to divide the viewpoint between Drothe
(the main character in my first two books) and his sister, Christiana. I had
thought it would be fun to not only see Drothe from the outside but also tell
part of the story from a different point of view. And it was. Nor was it like
this was a big stretch - I'd written short stories and my back-up novel this
way. Unfortunately, though, while I had a narrative structure, I didn't have an
actual story in mind. Once again, I was flying blind.
Normally, I'd like to think I could have overcome this
in other circumstances. But I think it's safe to say that, by this point, I had
something akin to a siege mentality when it came to writing. I'd missed my last
deadline repeatedly and was determined not to do so this time; but that simply
meant I was putting more pressure on myself to write both fast and effectively.
Other parts of my life began to fall away: writing became the only thing I felt
I could do. If I wasn't writing, I felt guilty for not doing so; if I was
writing, it was never enough. Never enough words, never a clean enough idea of
the story, never enough forward momentum. It became a vicious cycle I couldn't
get my head out of. Family, hobbies, free time - they all fell away. My world
narrowed down to writing, word count, and all of problems I perceived within
the story.
At its worst, I'd go to bed thinking about what I
needed to write the next day, only to wake up aware of all of the errors and
shortfalls I'd made the day before. I started circling back within the book,
re-writing and revising scenes and chapters based on what might come next in
the story, only to have to circle back yet again when what I wrote inevitably
didn't match what I had planned. Or as began to happen more often, when I
questioned myself and changed the plan again and again.
Naturally, I started missing deadlines. And just as
naturally, this only increased the pressure and the doubt and the guilt on my
end. What little process I had broke down. I started forgetting which version
of the story I'd written before, how things did or didn't fit together. At
times, I couldn't even be sure about what chapters were done and which weren't.
I also had a couple of panic attacks somewhere in there and got diagnosed with
depression as well.
Now, I want to say that through ALL of this, my editor
Anne Sowards and the people at Penguin were nothing but supportive. Every time
I needed to move the deadline, Anne obliged me. Any problems I had with writing
they took in stride. Frankly, they gave me FAR more rope (and grace) than I had
any right to expect. It wasn't until Penguin merged with Random House and the
new publishers decided that all outstanding books needed to be finished by a
hard deadline that I got any true pressure from them. And even then, right up
until the day my third book was due, Anne was trying to help me get something -
anything - over the finish line. As long as there was enough to work with, she
was going to fight for more time for me.
So, on the day before the book was truly, finally due,
I compiled what I had so I could send it on to my editor. I figured I was about
half-way done, maybe the short side of two-thirds. But when I compiled what I
had, I realized two things: 1) my "half" of the book was something
like 200,000 or 300,000 words (most fantasy novels run around 100,000 to
150,00), and 2) many of the chapters I'd thought were done earlier in the book?
They weren't. What I had after all that time was a collection of inter-connected
fragments. There was cohesion to it, but not in any presentable sense outside
of the story in my head.
All told, I probably wrote over 600,000 words for Book
3, although two thirds ended up in various trash files. And none of it was
presentable. I'd been so buried in the trenches and lost in my own mental
maelstrom, I hadn't realized that I'd essentially been flailing for nearly two
years.
When I saw the state of things, I called Anne and told
her we needed to cancel my contract for Book 3. There was no way I was going to
get her something she could argue for, let alone a finished manuscript, in any
kind of workable time frame. Even then, she was understanding and supportive,
still trying to pull something out right up until the end.
Making that call was one of the hardest things I've
ever done. I'd dreamed of being a fantasy novelist since I was around 12 years
old. To have to cancel my publishing contract not for any outside reason, but
because I hadn't been able to live up to the expectations of the job? Well, I'm
still coming to terms with it. But I'll also say this: when I hung up the phone
after making that call, I felt like five anvils had been instantly lifted off
my shoulders. For the first time in maybe five years, I felt like I could
breathe.
Why did it happen like this? Why was I so damn hard on
myself? Why did getting what I'd always hoped for end up beating me into the
ground? I can name a dozen possible reasons, and they will all change from day
to day. And none are more correct (or incorrect) than any others. In the end,
it's what happened. I won't say I've made peace with that, but I've at least
accepted it. I guess that'll have to be enough.
Have you written fantasy (or fiction)
since? Have you felt the urge?
For several years after I cancelled my contract, I thought about it, but it never came to anything. Eventually, I realized I wasn't trying to write because I wanted to; I was hacking away at the page because I wanted to hold onto my identity as "A Writer". But that had been part of the problem - I'd put so much emotional weight into the word "Writer", it had overwhelmed me. I needed to let it go. So I stopped trying to write anything for a good long time, just to see how it went. (Good thing, too - I ended up having a number of health issues that would have interfered with any serious writing I might have tried.)
When people talk about writing, there are always those
who say they have to write, or must put words down to feel complete, or they
feel compelled to do it. And that's great for them. But it's never been me.
While I like Having Written, I'm not the biggest fan of the process itself.
Some days I enjoy it, but most of the time it's a fight to get my butt in the
chair and produce any amount of words. I'm just as happy doing almost anything
else besides writing. But here's the kicker: I always, always feel better after
I've written something. Turns out the act of making art helps me level off and
feel more content in my life. (Just, apparently, not when I'm on a deadline.)
So yeah, I've begun to feel the stirrings of an urge
in the last few years. I wrote a couple of short stories I still need to sit
down and revise, as well as the skeleton and early musculature of something
that, while it was meant to be a short, may turn into a novelette. (None of
these are set in the world of my previous books, btw.) I've also got solid
ideas for a couple different stand-alone fantasy novels. So far I've been
hopping back and forth between them when it comes to research, character sketches,
plot ideas, and so on, but I know I'm going to have to choose one if I actually
want to get started. And I do want to get started at some point. My brain is
getting itchy to tell stories again. Finally.
You've talked about pressure to deliver,
and about writing difficulties. It feels - correct me if I'm wrong - as if that
pressure was (until the Penguin Random House merger at least) largely
self-imposed. And that the difficulties were (with zero comment on whether they
were fundamental or not) entirely based on your own estimation of the work? Did
you have a beta reader/s that you shared the work with as you did it? If so,
did they share your reservations? And did the feedback from readers in the form
of blog reviews, Goodreads etc reach you at all, and if so, did it add pressure
... or even lessen it?
Oh, the pressure was absolutely self-imposed. I mean, my editor did ask about the status of things, but only as deadlines grew near, and then she was always willing to give me an extension/look things over/offer support/what have you. For whatever reason, having a deadline completely undercut me. I think that part of that was the fact that, as I said, I hadn't written anything as complicated as a novel in anything resembling a reasonable time frame (at least as the SFF publishing industry defines "reasonable"). Another part was the dual pressure I was putting on myself to be 1) A Writer, and 2) put out a work that met my own unrealistic standards. Voltaire's "Perfect is the enemy of good" applies to me right down to my bones - I have a hell of a time accepting that good enough is good enough, be it at the sentence, paragraph, chapter, or even book level.
As for beta readers, I had them in the form of my
writer's group for the first novel and part of the second. But I (and other
members of my group) found that publishing deadlines made it hard to make the
group's reading schedule and the necessary production rate mesh. In at least a
couple of cases, you'd end up having to finish and submit the manuscript before
the writer's group got half way through the material you'd been handing out
(which in many cases was only a portion of the manuscript because, again, we
were all reading each others' work on a rotating basis).
Aside from the writer's group, I never had beta
readers reading as I wrote. For me, a beta reader was always someone who read
the work after the first draft was completed. I'm not sure why it got cemented
in my head that way, but the notion of handing pieces off as I wrote them never
occurred. Looking back at things now, it seems a rather limited and narrow view
of what could be a valuable resource, but that was my mindset. Would it have
helped? Maybe. Would it have made the pressure to produce worse? Also maybe. I
really have no way of knowing. I expect it could have helped me get out of my
own head when it came to Book 3, but I was so fatigued at that point (and had
such tunnel vision) it's hard to say for certain. And, again, I have a natural
aversion to handing out anything less than clean prose, so it would have been a
challenge regardless.
I don't recall the reason why any more, but after
Among Thieves I stopped reading reviews. There wasn't any great traumatic event
behind it - no particularly nasty or harsh reviews that scarred me or the like
- but I think I just got tired of some of the silly or petty reasons people
would pan a book. I know not every book is for every person, and I'm fine with
people not liking something I've written. My attitude has always been that once
the books goes to print, it's no longer mine in some ways. I can't control how
a person approaches it, what frame of mind they're in when the crack the cover,
their personal preferences, and so on. Art is meant to be experienced by the
individual partaking of it - the artist's intent behind the creation of that
art has to take a back seat to those considerations. I can't tell you how to
read my book or what it should mean to you: that's for you to decide. But when
people cite things that weren't in the work? When they accuse you, the author,
of things that have nothing to do with the work but rather their own agenda?
When some people are mean just for the sake of being mean? Well, you can certainly
feel that way and write what you want, but it doesn't mean I have to read it.
That's not to say that some reviews can't be
insightful or even thought provoking, and I'm flattered (and humbled) when
people put that much effort and time into talking about my work. And I'm
fortunate that I've had far more good reviews than negative ones. But at some
point, I decided I didn't want to have to sift through the dross to find the
gems. Does that make me defensive of my work? Possibly (I mean, I have an ego
like everyone else). But I also believe that most reviews function as a kind of
conversation between readers (or potential readers), rather than between the
reader and the author. After all, readers can comment on one another's reviews,
have a discussion on reddit about a work, and so on. But once an author steps
into that discussion? It changes the dynamic of the conversation, usually for
the worse.
You mentioned a depression diagnosis. Did you learn anything about the interaction
of the condition with the creative process? Do you think the depression grew
from the circumstances? Or perhaps it’s a chemical thing that came like weather
comes and had to be endured in the same way? Did the pressure to write
exacerbate the depression. Did writing ever help with depression in any way?
I was diagnosed with depression while I was working on
Book 3, so in my mind there's a connection between the two. Prior to that, I
didn't really display any symptoms or behaviors associated with the diagnosis.
Does that mean the writing caused the problems? Or was I chemically predisposed
somehow? Did the act of trying to create under so much stress simply triggered
something that was going to happen anyway? Or would it have never happened
otherwise? I can't say. All I know for certain is that my depression truly,
recognizably, and definitively manifested itself while I was working on my
third book. If there was any kind of ramp-up period prior to that, neither I
nor no one around me noticed it.
And the thing is, I know I'm a different person now.
My outlook has shifted. The way I approach things, feel about them, interact
with people - it's all subtly different. I've had other health issues since
that have provided additional challenges, but the depression...it seems to sit
at the center of things. It may ebb and flow, but it's always there, hanging
out, like a second shadow attached to your shoes.
In the case of writing, yes, there was a distinct
break. A hard before-and-after line drawn by my depression. How I used to
approach writing, how I thought about it, how I sat down and actually did it,
is another land to me. I've tried to recreate it, but I can't go back. Now,
writing is harder. It comes with more doubt, more stress, more uncertainty.
More discomfort. And yet part of me still wants to do
it. Only now, another part of me no longer cares if I do. And I hate that
latter part.
Many thanks, Doug. I hope the depression wanes and that writing can be more joy, less chore. I'm sure that what you've shared here will be something someone needed to hear, and it has certainly helped me to better understand the struggle.
