I don’t think I’ve ever seen a video that shows what it’s like to write a novel as perfectly as this one, which is impressive considering it’s barely over 90 seconds long and there is no keyboard anywhere:
Although the title of this refers to life, it’s just as applicable to writing. When you’re writing, there will be ups and there will be downs. They might not be as literal as what’s going on in this video, but they’ll still feel that way. You’ll climb a few stairs, take a tumble off, bounce back, get a few more steps, and on and on. Then when you think you’ve made it to the top, you start the revision process and it seems like all you’re doing is bouncing on your back over and over, but eventually you make it back to the top of a better set of stairs than you built on the way up.
The only real difference is that instead of it taking place over a minute and a half, it will take place over a year and a half. Enjoy it. The process isn’t what you have to get through to get to the fun part of having written something, it is the fun itself.
This is one of the most horrible side effects of people who use generative AI and think they’ve written something: the process is the product. Writing makes us human; reading just makes us better at it. AI does neither.
Enjoy the falls as much as the steps upward. The reason this video applies as much to life as to writing is because you’re bringing the reader into another life. A life you’ve created. It could be the life of one character or, like I wrote about last weekend, it could be a whole cast of new characters that didn’t exist until you made them. Their lives will look like this inside what you’re writing while at the same time your life will look like this inside you. Revel in it.
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