Writing is a maze

I see writing stories as going through a maze in the dark. Sometimes I know where the exit is, or maybe different parts of the maze I need to get to, but for the most part, all I know is where I’m standing and that I need to reach that end point.

My first rough drafts consist of me wandering through the maze. Aimless, doubling back, sometimes taking only a few steps before I turn right around and go a different direction. Many times I’m not even sure this process makes me “count” as a writer – the story in this stage is so fuzzy, more a concept than an actual story. Many times I’m terrified that I’ll wind up at some dead end and that will be the point that I will be too frustrated, bored, and clueless to continue. Or that maybe I wasn’t writing a story to begin with and there’s no point.

But really, I’m learning the maze as I’m walking through. Every word, every little scene, every time I make a decision to have my character be one way rather than another, or add another little dimension to the plot, I’m creating it.

By the end, I’ll have to erase all the places I wandered, doubled back, all the dead ends I reached. Get rid of all the contradictory paths, the places I meandered so far off from the end point that it’s incomprehensible.

I used to believe that “real writers” didn’t have to do this. Real writers got story ideas in their head whole cloth, first rough drafts were maybe a little weak but still complete, real writers didn’t have countless pages in their notebooks scribbled out. But I wonder now if I just romanticized the idea of what a “real writer” is. The method of how a story is written isn’t nearly as important as getting it done. No matter how many rough drafts it takes, no matter how many times I walk through this same stretch of maze and find myself hitting my head against the same dead end.

I will reach the end point. And then I will walk through the maze, again and again and again, until I can walk through it from beginning to end, easily and smoothly, following the right path.