The Middle
Between one side or the other, here you are. Now what?
Welcome back to the Writer’s Secret Weapon. I’m John, it’s good to have you back. Today, I’ve got something interesting for you.
The part no one is talking about
Pop open any social media and you’ll find writers. You’ll find writers complaining. Bragging. Begging. Selling. Networking.
But you know what you don’t see? Writers writing. The middle of the process.
Because all social media can do is glamorize two points of a line segment rather than the line itself.
And this is where we find ourselves today. Or probably most days. So let’s talk about the middle. The middle of the writing process. The middle gap between beginning and ending. The middle between success and failure.
The starting point has cookies and fireworks
The writing, publishing, and the writing advice industries all love when people start things. Starting is fun. You have an all new and shiny idea. You have enthusiasm. You can tell people you’re starting a new thing and you get praise and support. There’s a rush of brain chemicals and creativity and you don’t have any of that judgment you might have for your already started drafts or ideas.
Everyone and their uncle Steve have tools and solutions for you. Take this course. Watch this YouTube video. Follow these accounts. Interact with these people who all sort of sound the same while saying nothing but I swear they’re different, trust me.
Starting something gets subdivided into two categories - that it’s exciting to start or that the blank page is daunting and you can’t just start without this whole pile of tools that are one credit card purchase away. Businesses sell you the exciting part based on the hope that you buy in to just how big you can succeed if things go your way, then they sell you all the tools when you realize that nobody’s going to make it big in exactly the way they’ve been selling you.
It’s not hard to find coaches and writers and predators and idiots and jackasses all setting up shop in and around the beginning space. Writers linger there too long because the rush of new idea and new praise is intoxicating. They stay stuck in beginning mode because there are no stakes, no judgments, and no rejections. It’s fear of progress because it’s fear of discovering that what you fantasize about (being a writer, being published, making money, whatever) is hard to do or not possible for you to do based on where you are.
But a beginning is just a part of what you have to do, and you can’t keep starting over and calling it a career. The first mile of a marathon is one of many miles, and you gotta keep getting one foot in front of the other.
The ending point has cookies and fireworks
And somehow, after you begin, you’re eventually going to finish. And not only will you finish, but there’s big giant success waiting for you. An audience. Sales. Attention. Clicks. All you need to do is start your book then something something something then it’s done and you win at being a writer.
I have watched too many people of varying degrees of talent and intelligence buy this dream by the gallon and waterboard themselves into self-blame when they can’t finish anything. (Naturally, they solve the lack of finishing with loads more starting, taking us right back to the starting point)
Plenty of industry exists around finishing. Things to accelerate sales. Things to install. Things to track. Writers turned into accountants and social media managers and media flacks. Writers turned into everything except a better writer.
But yay, you’re done! You did something that more than half the people who started can’t do! You’re special! You’re good enough! You did it! I don’t know what you did exactly, because they’re about to turn around and tell you there’s five thousand next steps that you should be doing, but hey good job doing a monumental thing that turned out to be a first step all on its own.
And don’t forget to jump on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and find your choice of writer shouting about their metrics and their sales while sipping some kind of coffee from a large clear plastic container. And don’t forget that competition is apparently a thing so if you’ve never really thought too hard about your market or your Amazon tags or your pitch or your query, shit, you’re fucked. Better to just start over and we’ll see you later. Unless … unless you wouldn’t mind handing me your email address and credit card because I’ve got the perfect deal for you.
Endings are exciting. There’s all new praise to get. There’s a sense of accomplishment. But like Semisonic says every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. So while the novel draft might be done, you’ve got this whole authorial project and career ahead. .
All that and we still haven’t talked about the important part. If we stayed here we’d be no different than Candy or whoever all out here on their #girlboss trying to tell you that your dream of success should be powered by what they’re selling. A few AI agents. Some sloppy PDFs. Some pre-recorded videos they play off as live. Throw in some hip hop dancing and some pop culture references and we’ve got a whole industry.
The kid on the desk and the kid in the ground
This is where I should be making some kind of triumphal speech to motivate you. This is where I should tell you to ignore the industry and boldly pursue your dreams. Damn the torpedoes, full speed to the horizon.
That’s not today. That’s not this. I got plenty of those. But this one today is where I tell you that there’s a messy battlefield between the beginning and the end where you’re going to fight yourself and fight your fears and fight your doubts and fight your creativity before you come out on the other side with hopefully something that you love as much but differently than when you started.
See, for all the greatness of the Dead Poets Society speeches and rah rah, O Captain My Captain, there might be a kid on the desk who has transformed themselves and been radicalized into our creative rebellion, but for every one of them, there’s a whole lot of kids dead because their Dad didn’t want them to be actors. We gloss over the dead kids so we can stand on desks. The industry sells you desks.
The industry won’t mourn you when you’re gone.
But the part in Dead Poets Society that needs to be looked at, the part where our creative rebel alliance flourishes, those are the other lessons, the middle of the process between the start and the end. What to do now that the books get torn. The challenging conventions. The celebrating of growth, not the mindful structured eye towards a mechanical future. That’s where we fight the Empire. That’s where we tell Candy to suck a whole carton of eggs. That’s where we’re the most us and the most free. The middle isn’t to be feared, it’s to be embraced.
The middle is where the work happens
It’s unglamorous. It’s messy. It is a battlefield. You show up to it with doubts and creativity in equal measure. You show up to it when the background hum of your life in full blare. The kids need you. The dog won’t stop. There are dishes. Don’t forget the laundry. Don’t forget you’re supposed to be journaling and moisturizing.
If the industry paid attention to the middle the way they do the beginnings and endings, I think we’d see a lot fewer people preying on writers. I think we’d all be having way more honest conversations about the nature of trying to get the story out of your head and onto the page.
It’s hard for someone to sell you a PDF or a weekend Zoom course when you’re in the middle of chapter 12 and you’re not sure if the dialogue between character 1 and character 8 is any good.
In the beginning, you get someone to offer you the dream of the future and show you a route forward.
In the end, you get someone offering you a route through the next steps.
In the middle, get fucked nerd. Reach for the AI or the fast solution so you can get back to the safety of ending one thing and beginning something else.
The middle of the project isn’t a waiting room or a lobby where you sit in some uncomfortable chair and stare at beige walls until someone calls your name and hands you all your hopes and dreams. The middle of the project is where you need actual technical help and support. It’s where most books and careers falter, choke, and die because you’re far enough away from the thrill of beginning and the accomplishment of ending that it feels like you’ll never get anywhere.
I live in the middle. In the mess. Down there in the dirt and the draft problems and the uncertainty and where all the questions come up. I help people from beginning to end, sure, that’s what any good coach does, but the middle is where we put in work. No desk to stand on, just progress and growth and doing the difficult stuff with better tools until the difficult doesn’t feel so bad.
The industry can’t praise or sell you the middle because there’s too much work to do that can’t be polished, the way you don’t sell loaves of bread by showing piles of wet flour. The middle deserves attention, and you deserve to know there are tools and people and things you can do to make your middles less scary.
And I want you to get to the middle too, because that means you’re past the saccharin beginning and not yet chasing the end. Let’s bury the bullshit and leave the industry to their algorithms and magnets and clickables.
I’m here to work. I’m here to help.
Love you. Talk soon.
Shoutout to subscriber Heather who’s work has impressed me for ages. I’d love all of us to get where she is. Go be her 500th subscriber.