Driving through Winter Doubt

In Michigan we get the worst potholes in the winter, can I get an Amen.

The giant green plough trucks skim the road and at each spot the pavement is buckled it rips off the top like a scab you can’t quit picking at.

So slowly over the course of winter the holes get bigger and bigger as freezing and thawing water cause the road to blister. By the spring the holes can do serious damage to your car if your wheels run over them.

All because of frozen water. Snow, ice, slush… oh the slush pile, are you with me?

These are the stories you send out over and over again. The ones that with each passing rejection seem to make the doubt over the plot, characters, structure, all of it, grow into a hole that if gone through again can cause serious damage to your resolve.

What’s a writer to do?

Sure you can run around patching holes like the winter construction crews do, trying to fix each little nitpicking thing someone brings up. Whether they are right about your story or not it’s still scrapping at your mind, your energy, your time.

Did you know the best way to fix a road is to actually build a new one.

Not that you would ever ever ever toss out or destroy your old words, those are valuable, they are a map of where you have been. But instead write a new story and another and another and another. And one of those stories will be the one where a passenger, like an agent, is going to jump into your car and drive it through to the next adventure with you.