Hey Crew,

Sometimes you need to take a step backward to take a step forward.

CTRL+A, Del

Drop back 10 and punt.

Today I deleted everything I’d written so far in V&A 3. Sadly, it wasn’t much and even though I re-did nearly all of chapter 1 again, I’m still a net loss of words on the day.

Am I sad?

Oh, heavens no.

No idea why I was disappointed with what I’d written the first time, but the second time, I’m happier. Perhaps I wasn’t in the headspace of the characters as quickly as I thought I would be after jumping from ASH2 into V&A3. I lost track of one character by the time I started chapter 2 and… it just wasn’t going well at all.

So, I started over. I kept the beats of chapter 1, just not the words. I already knew how the story was going to start, and so it did. Just not cleanly or as I would have liked.

Now, it does.

You can’t be afraid to delete words (or copy them out of one file into a ‘trash’ file. Sometimes the art won’t happen. Painters paint over bad paintings. Digital artists will redraw the same line a dozen times to get it right (Check out Drawfee https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoal_hpPIPAnWlG-kWHLheA to see real-time artists, it’s funny, but you can see what I’m talking about).

That’s what I did here. Yes, I lost a week’s productivity, but the story will be better for it. There’s no sense in getting hung up on something when I know it’s wrong. This is V&A Shipping. It’s my first podcast novel. It’s my most read and listened to work. It needs to be right. People will notice if the characters aren’t speaking the way they should or reacting the way they should. Heck, I noticed right away. And, I fixed it. 🙂

Tomorrow, I’ll write more words and be back on track. Probably hitting a better stride than I did in the first week on this book. I knew it wasn’t right and the impromptu trip to Ensenada didn’t help my headspace with regards to the story.

With a clearer head, I will make it happens.

Until Next Time!

Stay Awesome!