Vijay Fitzgerald
10 August 2025
•4 min read
I was so annoyed with myself. That voice inside my head kept looping: I should know better. I should do better. I should…
I hate 'shoulds'.
So I began to question everything: my approach, my ability, my vision.
Fueled by a tornado of emotions, I flipped through handwritten notes, playlists, quotes. I even pulled out my pristine project plan for the novel. It was so shiny it could've been hung in a museum. The best project plan ever! The project manager in me was smug, and smiling. The writer in me? Quietly giggling, because nothing was going to plan.
And then, I spotted it: a beautiful Christmas present from a friend. Encased in a wooden frame, smooth, cursive writing in gold pen, on cream paper against vintage pink floral. A powerful reminder:
"A word, after a word, after a word is power."
— Margaret Atwood
Not just a quote. A key.
I realised I was wrestling the whole novel into shape like some wild beast. And there is a place for it, but moving from draft one to draft two perhaps wasn't it. I sat down. I breathed. Then I asked the universe for answers (because that's where a logical person places power, right?).
I asked myself one simple question: What is this story about?
Well, the universe didn't give an answer. It gave me three better questions:
- Who has the most to lose?
- Who should tell the story?
- And how should she tell it?
The clarity didn't come with a revelation but something that we all know as writers. The truth of every story is that they are born from tension. From stakes. From perspective. They come alive not when we force them, but when we drop inside them.
So I started again. Not from the beginning but from the very spot of the second draft lens, armed with basics: Voice. Character. Scene.
My ego won't let me deny that I'm a planner, and a damn good one. I had a beat-by-beat outline, scene-by-scene for the arc of my story. But I realised that in preserving the plot, I wasn't paying attention to the story that wanted to be told or the evolution that naturally happens when we rewrite. I learnt that for me to keep the story alive, I need to make the plan more of a fluid tool, and not a checklist. At least not this time. The plan will have its moment to shine, just not yet.
I had been on a mission to finish, to publish, to be productive, but I forgot that writing is an act of listening. Listening to our characters. To ourselves. To the voice that's been waiting patiently behind the noise. And when we stop fighting the direction the story wants to take, and just start listening, word after word, we end up with pages of the story that actually wants to be told.