I can't write this book

“I can’t write this book.” I choked on a sob. “I don’t know how.” I wiped my snotty nose on my sleeve and sunk my head down on the desk. “I’ve written almost everything imaginable and never struggled like this before. I know how to write, but I don’t know how to do this. I can’t do this. I really can’t write this book. What was I thinking taking this job?!”

To be honest, there were some cuss words mixed in with my tears and my self-pitying monologue (ok, fine, there were a lot of cuss words mixed in) and it went on a whole lot longer, multiple days of tears and false starts.

I had nightmares in which the story was slipping through my fingers; I’d find the perfect line and then it would vanish. I wrote twenty-two false starts. I tried writing it in 1st person, limited 3rd person, omniscient 3rd person, and with an involved observer-narrator. I tried writing it chronologically, starting at the beginning. I tried writing it out of order, starting near the end. I tried everything.

None of it worked. All of it felt wrong.

Every story has an entry point, a way in. I don’t mean open lines, although sometimes those are the way into the story, I mean an angle, a spark, an x-factor, a starting place. It’s the way the book lays itself out before you. And I couldn’t find it. I could look in the window and see all the rooms, but I couldn’t find the key.

So, I cried, ate handfuls of chocolate chips, and yelled at my husband for letting me take this job (because I needed to pretend that it was someone else’s fault and not mine). I was out of my depth. I hadn’t struggled to write something like this in years — maybe not ever.

I cried so much, my husband was scared of me. And I wasn’t done crying.

If it was my own book I would have walked away, but it wasn’t. I had been hired to tell a particular story. My first full length ghostwriting project. And that was exactly the problem.

Telling someone else’s story is a heavy responsibility. Mix in my own expectations for what the book could (no, should!) be, my crippling desire not to disappoint anyone, and the fact that I already had no margins in my life. Now, you have a recipe for disaster.

Which is pretty much exactly what happened this weekend. Disaster. A full on enneagram 4 melt down. I felt like a fraud, a fool, a complete and utter failure. And I knew I was going to be found out. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t write the book.

But here’s what I realized at the end of a weekend full of tears and temper tantrums...

Maybe I don’t have to find the key. Maybe I don’t have to write the book that’s in my head. Maybe I don’t have to live up to the heavy standard I’ve draped across my own shoulders.

Here’s the honest truth, my assessment wasn’t wrong — I can’t write this book. At least not the one that’s in my head. And probably not the one that’s in the client’s head either, the one that makes people feel “the whole gamut of human emotion.” I don’t have the experience, the skills, the ability — at least, not yet.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell this story to the best of my current abilities. I don’t have to write the perfect book. I don’t have to write the beautiful book in my head. All I can do is write the book that I can write, right now. That’s ultimately all I can offer. Maybe it will be enough, maybe not. That’s fine too — there are reasons there are clauses in the contract saying the client can back out at any time. I don’t have to write them the perfect book. I just have to offer the best I can right now, and then let them decide if it’s what they want or not.

And maybe this is a lesson I need to carry into all my writing. Even when I’m writing my own stories, without the pressure of a particular audience, without the pressure of meeting someone else’s expectation, I can still get frustrated that my work isn’t where I want it to be, that it doesn’t match the idea in my head, that it doesn’t hit the goal I was aiming for.

Again, all I can do is write the story I can write, right now. Write what I’m capable of now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be capable of more. I don’t know. But, for now, I’ll keep writing the books I can write, right now.

That, and I’ll never again take a ghostwriting job ;)

Grace and peace,
Bethany