On Process: The Next Thing

There is a draft I have been circling.

Not avoiding exactly. Circling. Like an animal that knows there is water nearby but is not sure if the bank is safe.

It is a novel. A Shadow Against the Night. I have written parts of it. I have dreamed more of it. I have characters in there who feel more real than some people I have had coffee with.

And it scares me to death.

In the best way.

Here is what I mean.

Writing what you know is safe. I know what it feels like to be a neurodivergent woman in America. I know hunger. I know escape. I know the particular loneliness of surviving something and then having to explain it to people who were not there.

I have written all of that. I will write it again.

But A Shadow Against the Night asks me to write what I do not know.

Not because I am avoiding research. Because the research is the point. And the research is terrifying.

There are memes online about rabbit holes. You start with one question. You end up three hours deep in the history of cuneiform.

Do not get me started on cuneiform.

I will get started on cuneiform.

The earliest writing system. Wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay. Scribes who spent their entire lives learning hundreds of signs. A language that no one has spoken for two thousand years, but we can still read it. Sort of.

That is a rabbit hole. That is one word. One curiosity. One click.

Now imagine a whole novel.

A Shadow Against the Night requires me to write outside my own orientation. Outside my own body. Outside my own lived experience.

That is not something I take lightly.

I believe in writing diversely. I believe in writing inclusively. I believe that stories should reflect the world — not just the narrow slice I have personally walked through.

But believing in something and doing it well are two different things.

I am afraid of getting it wrong.

Not because I am fragile. Because the people I am writing about deserve better than a writer who half-asses the research and calls it empathy.

That is why the novel scares me. Not the plot. Not the prose. The responsibility.

So I circle it. Again.

I open the document. I read what I have already written. I close it.

I read a book about the thing I do not know. I take notes. I feel smarter for an hour. Then I realize how much I do not know and I close the notebook.

I think about sensitivity readers. I am not afraid of them. I am grateful for them. But the thought of sending my work to someone who actually lives what I am trying to write — that is humbling. That is the moment when the research stops being abstract and becomes accountable.

I am not there yet. I am still circling.

Here is what I am learning, though.

The fear is not a stop sign. It is a temperature check.

If a project does not scare me at least a little, it is probably not worth doing. The safe projects are fine. They pay the bills. They build the muscle. But the next thing — the one that makes my chest tight — that is the one that matters.

That is the one that will teach me something.

Not just about writing. About being human. About reaching across the gap between what I know and what I am trying to understand.

That gap is not empty. That gap is where the work lives.

So I will keep circling.

I will fall down rabbit holes. Cuneiform. Historical clothing. The way light moves in a place I have never been. I will spend three hours learning something that ends up as one sentence in the final draft.

That is not wasted time. That is the apprenticeship.

I will write badly. I will get things wrong. I will send my draft to sensitivity readers and they will tell me what I missed. And I will fix it. And I will learn. And the next draft will be better.

That is not failure. That is the process.

A Shadow Against the Night scares me to death.

In the best way.

Because the things that scare you — really scare you, the way a good story should — those are the things worth chasing.

So I am going to stop circling.

Not today. Maybe not this week. But soon.

I am going to open the document. I am going to write one sentence. Then another. Then another. I am going to get it wrong. And then I am going to get it less wrong.

I am afraid of it, honestly. And I am going to write it anyway.

I will do my research. I will talk to my friends in the LGBTQIA+ community. I will make sure it is respectful. Not because I am afraid of getting cancelled. Because they deserve better than a writer who guesses, who fails.

This is not my story. Not my trauma. Not my body or my orientation or my history.

But the Irish immigrant at the center of A Shadow Against the Night — the love triangle he is thrust into, the parts of himself he has to dig up, the trauma and the beauty — his story deserves to be heard.

And I am the one who heard it first.

That means something. That is a responsibility I do not take lightly.

So I will fall down rabbit holes. I will ask hard questions. I will write drafts that get it wrong. I will listen. I will revise. I will send my work to people who know more than I do. And I will thank them when they tell me what I missed.

That's hard. That's gutsy.

That is what it means to write outside yourself without losing yourself.

I am scared. But I am also ready.

Not ready to be perfect. Ready to try.

And his story — their stories — are worth every uncomfortable hour.