The Longest Route to Craft Competence
What a brutal learning curve reminded me about becoming a better writer
I just finished a three-book project that took an embarrassingly long time to complete. For a minute there, I thought it might defeat me.
The problem wasn’t a lack of time, mental space, or gumption. It was one thousand percent a lack of know-how. Up to that point, I’d tackled only simple interior design in MS Word, and lately, I’ve let Atticus do it for me.
This was vastly different.
Let me tell you, interior designers earn their keep.
Problems came at me from every side: margins, illustrations, exporting, print problems. I kept getting things wrong, troubleshooting, and starting all over. This project was the steepest learning curve I’ve faced in years. It cost me time, aggravation, and money in failed proof copies.
I was a stubborn child, and I am a stubbornly independent author. This would not defeat me.
The payoff is a new skill, plus that pat on the back I gave myself for sticking with it. Well done, April. You spent months of frustration getting nowhere. Until the end, of course.
The experience took me back to my first year of writing fiction and the contest critique that completely demoralized me. That feedback made me realize how much I didn’t know about the craft of writing. The learning curve in that instance felt enormous too.
You might be remembering your own I-have-no-clue realization. Maybe you’re there right now.
At the beginning, we know how to write sentences, so we think we know how to write stories. But then we’re confronted with POV, pacing, character arcs, dialogue, interiority, structure, and a million other craft challenges. As soon as we learn to show instead of tell, we realize that all we're “showing” are sighs, nods, and grins.
I eventually figured out my interior design problems through trial and error, just as I did years ago in my early writing career. It was the longest route to competence, but it’s not the only one.
Someone skilled in interior design could have drastically reduced the frustration in my life. In the same way, a writing coach could’ve helped me figure out why emotion was falling flat in my stories for so long.
That’s one reason I do what I do now. Sometimes you don’t need more time or gumption. You need someone who can see the problem, explain why it isn’t working, and teach you how to fix it with craft competence.
And if writing believable character emotion and deep POV happens to be part of your learning curve, keep an eye out for The Layered Reaction Block Method, my upcoming online course. I’m building it to teach writers a practical framework for doing what took me years of trial and error to learn.
In the meantime, maybe delegate that interior design project—or buckle up for a steep software learning curve.
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