If I could say one thing about beginnings to my
teenage self, it’d be this: they’re easy.
Oh, yeah, sure, they’re scary, too. But there’s a hazy spot where “scary” and
“exciting” blur until you can’t really tell so much where one ends and the
other starts. And I know that it feels,
when you’re a teen, as though you’re constantly dealing with new beginnings:
new schools, new relationships, never-before-seen hardships…But trust me. Beginnings are easy.
It’s the middles that’re rough.
If you don’t want to take my word for it, ask a
college junior who is bone-tired and broke (probably up to their eyebrows in
debt, too), and who has worked themselves to the nubs only to find out that
their inevitable change of major has put them a semester (or a year) behind
schedule.
Or, ask the couple who have already been married
twenty years, have learned virtually everything about their partners, and are
only fifty years old (yeah, teen-me, I just said “only fifty”).
Ask a novelist who has hit the convoluted middle of
her first draft.
Middles are rough.
Compared to the beginnings that came before, they’re dull. We aren’t talking about the thrill of moving
to a new place. We aren’t talking about
the whirlwind of falling in love. We’re
talking about facing days that look pretty much like the days that came
before. The ah-ha! moment is in the
rear-view.
But the thing is, you don’t get a glorious ending if
you don’t ever slog through the middle.
You will never get to the sale of a book if you don’t push through that
time period, years after the, “I’m going to be a writer!” announcement, when
rejections are filling up your inbox.
The middles—the times that require you to dig deep
and get to work—are what make you who you are.
And, in those middle sections, you will also be
greeted with quiet moments of beauty and sweetness, too. You just have to learn where to look.
I, for one, even take great pleasure in catching
sight of my sweet boy sleeping by the door…
Like I said, you’ve just got to know where to look…
Oh, the conversations I have had with my teen self. My teen self just said "Huh?"
ReplyDeleteBeginnings are easy, Middles are the hardest and ends loom but in the end (pun intended) they aren't so bad either...they just lead to new beginnings.
I began a middle-grade novel got to the middle and got stuck so I opened an Esty shop called CedarMoon and I began to sell 're-imagined flamingos' (which is a story to be written in itself). It gave me gave the perfect excuse not to finish my book. I think I need to get back to it. Thanks for the reminder Holly.
YES! Get back to your book pronto, Kate! (I'm attempting to wrap up a book of my own right now...) Sending you good writing vibes...
ReplyDelete