Every once in a while, I write something that I know I shouldn’t share. But then I tell myself, that’s the stuff I must share. Philip Roth said to Ian McEwan, “Write as if your parents are dead.” What he means is: don’t censure yourself out of fear of what people might think. As all my friends and family have learned, I take that advice seriously.
No, I’m not about to admit any felonies from my past—the statute of limitations isn’t quite up yet—but I am going to open up about how the midpoint of my work-in-progress drove me to impotence.
Oh, you’re paying attention now, aren’t you? Welcome to my party.
Of course, I mean literary impotence…
(Remember, if you want total unedited, unfiltered boo, you can listen to these via the button above or, in a day or so, on Spotify or Apple.)
A few quickies:
* By God, go see Project Hail Mary! It’s stupendous, glorious, wondrous! And if you can, see it in Imax. The writer, Andy Weir, created a masterful book, and the movie couldn’t have done a better job, save the fact that they left out one of my fave lines: I commend your body to the stars. How dare they edit that out!!! Ugh.
* Can I change your life? Listen to Matthew Halsall’s first album, Sending My Love. Totally accessible, yet fearless jazz from England. Here it is on Apple. My soul glows when this is spinning on our turntable.
Before we jump into my essay, let me say that I’m breaking these longer craft essays up so as not to swallow your whole day. I hope that gives you a chance to digest them without drowning in words. Especially, you non-writers. Give these craft chats a chance. It’s still long; sorry, not sorry. Here we go…
I was in trouble, and despite years of training telling me that it was simply another navigable hurdle standing in the way of victory, I thought this was it, the book where I ran out of gas. So much for trying to write without an outline. Stick a fork in me!
I’d definitely been there before—every single project since the beginning. In fact, I have a reminder that surfaces on my calendar this time every year that basically says,
Dear future Boo, I am writing to you from the midpoint of The Singing Trees, and I’m in a bad way. I’ve never been so down and lost. If you’re reading this, you survived. Hopefully, The Singing Trees didn’t tank your career. Trust me, it could never get any worse than right now. I’m at zero hope, zero faith. Know that this feeling always passes and that you will find a way to the end of the project, and you will feel whole again, even proud of what you’ve accomplished!
I wish I could go back and tell past Boo that The Singing Trees would go on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. I also wish past Boo’s message was enough to make things easier.
How I long for a day when I don’t run into trouble at the midpoint because it’s awful. And let me not be misunderstood here. It’s really fucking awful and complicated, and bless your heart if you’re one of those writers who jogs through the midpoint without resistance. If I wasn’t such a nice guy, I’d cast a hex on you.
We’ll explore the who, what, and why of the midpoint soon, but for now, let’s define it as the 50%-ish mark of your novel, where the story hopefully locks into a higher gear and starts racing toward the end. It’s also the burial ground of many an unfinished project, and a rite of passage for the brave few who will one day hold a finished book in their hand.
Funnily enough—and it is admittedly absurd—I didn’t even realize that I was caught up in resistance to the midpoint for an agonizing week. I should have, as I’m no stranger to the pain, but I’d forgotten—or, more likely, suppressed—the nightmarish memories.
Seasoned pro that I am, humbly offering writerly advice, I had paused, done some prep work, and told myself I was ready to bust through. In fact, after writing without an outline thus far, I’d taken the time to sketch out a series of story beats that would take me to the end. All that was required was a couple of thousand words every day. The midpoint would soon be in my rearview mirror.
Pardon my analogy, but I can’t not share it. It turned out that writing during those days was like having sex without an erection. There I was, mashing keys with limp digits, with a flaccid degree of hope, my creativity impotent, telling myself that all I had to do was get some words down.
Get something on the page, Boo Walker! Anything. Oh, fuck it, you want anything? #$%GHIOJ:IO(UHJfdsjhjfdhijuhfd!! There you go, have fun with that. Feed your family with that story, you constipated sack of wordmuck.
My rabid monkey mind and the fact that I was shooting blanks aside, I knew I was right to keep putting something on the page, because you can’t edit white space, and you sure as hell won’t ever type “The End” if you’re stuck in the middle.
Those moments are when I’ve got nothing left but resilience. One day I’ll be on my deathbed, plugged into machines, saying my last goodbyes, and grasping for a keyboard to get my words in for the day.
Sounds extreme, doesn’t it? I suppose it is, but it works. My career is built on pushing past endless obstacles and rejection with unwavering, blind, and quite possibly naive resolve. I’m getting those words in, hell or high water, whether I’m slamming into the wall, climbing it, circumventing it, or digging under it. I’ll even jump over the bastard. Hand me a pole vault!
As you can imagine, it was a crummy time, and I wasn’t feeling good in my body at all. Whereas I should have been patting myself on the back for hitting my word count each day, I was beating myself up for failing to write anything inspiring, and even more so for always making it so difficult on myself. I bet Rebecca Makkai and Maggie Stiefvater don’t deal with such mental battles.
Then…on top of everything going wrong, I ran into trouble with my software. Pay attention here, this isn’t a geeky software discussion. I’m going somewhere with this.
Having reached the midpoint, I was ready to share the first half with a beta reader, which meant I needed to move my manuscript from Scrivener to Microsoft Word—an inevitable step in my annual process. There’s a feature called Compile in Scrivener built for this exact reason.
As I recalled from last year, I’d had some trouble with compiling all the chapters into a single Word doc, so as I started to wrap my head around the process, I told myself I’d master it this time. After trying on my own to make it work, then spending hours researching on YouTube and consulting two or three different AI engines, I reached out to colleagues and friends and writer groups, begging for answers. It is no exaggeration to say I was absolutely losing my mind, pulling out chunks of hair. I could get close with the Compile parameters, but I couldn’t create a perfect conversion to Word. And I refused to stop short of perfect.
My friend, the great writer Barbara O’Neal, responded to my plea and shared that she absolutely adored Scrivener and that all I had to do was simply copy and paste the whole document. I replied, Yes, I understand, but that’s really just a Band-Aid. I want to figure out how the Compile feature works. Otherwise, what’s the point? I can’t believe Scrivener hasn’t made this any easier over the years. What jerks!
It drove me mad that Barbara was so casual about it. I cynically thought in my head, Oh, good for you, Barbara. It’s so easy for you, this writing gig. Must be nice!
In agony now, I decided that Scrivener was dead to me. It was time to find a replacement, and while I was at it, revamp my process. We neurodivergent people love to explore new avenues. I spent three days researching and test driving other options with unhinged determination.
Meanwhile, by the way, I was getting nowhere with my work-in-progress.
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Then one of the AIs, with unbelievable audacity, suggested my frustration could simply be a symptom of a larger problem, that perhaps I was struggling with a particular part of my book.
It took me another couple of days and some R-rated rants to process this suggestion, but I eventually got around to asking the internet what the most challenging part of writing a book was. Guess what. The common answer was the midpoint.
What an idiot I was to be swept away on a software research tangent. Anything to resist figuring my way past the midpoint. I won’t even spend word count sharing the other ways I was procrastinating, but there were many.
In fact, writing this essay could almost be considered avoidance, but I wanted to use it as a cathartic exercise. A way to formally process how a rage toward Scrivener had been my way of avoiding the blues of the midpoint. Then I thought that it would be nice to share it with you, because maybe I’m not alone in facing challenges—writerly or otherwise—or, in this case, involuntarily dissociating from them. Surely we’re not all Maggie, Rebecca, and Barbara. Curse them and their ease with words!!!! (Just kidding. I remove the curse, friends.) But still, I low-key resent all of you. I should formally admit that Barbara was right about simply copying and pasting; sometimes the easy way is the right way.
You can see what a writer is up against, and I’m a working novelist who’s been doing this a long time. It’s still not easy! I don’t think I’m alone? Am I alone? Oh, God, maybe.
Of course, awareness is only one step toward a solution. I’m addressing you now from a place of having just reached the end of my first draft, so we can safely say that I defeated the monster, and I’m eager to share some tricks.
Before I get into the nitty-gritty of the midpoint, what it is, why it matters, why it presents difficulty, and most importantly, how we can get past it, let me be clear: you must take the midpoint seriously. You need to know it’s coming, that it might be hiding in ambush. It might even attack you passively, silently, like a software virus—you don’t know you’ve been hacked till it’s too late.
If you’re trying to slip by the midpoint unnoticed, like a prisoner avoiding the watchtower on her way to escape, then you’re missing the point. Ha, you’re missing the midpoint! It’s the ultimate reset, the story beat when you surprise the reader by dropping them into a dunk tank. It’s when you reload the gun, the moment in your space flight when you jettison your empty fuel tanks and ignite the second-stage engines for the push into orbit.
To me, such a massive story beat requires each of the voices in my head (true self, ego, inner child, dopamine chaser, OCD planner, ADHD space cadet, watchtower guy, smooth jazz lover, etc.) to convene in the war room for an all-hands meeting so that we can make sure we’re ready for the final approach.
Let’s take a break. Thanks for playing. I’ll be back soon with more midpoint thoughts, including tactics to make it sing.
I hope you have a glorious week.
Your friends,
boo and the choir that makes up his monkey mind
Drowning in Words is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
