A little bit about Crises of Faith and The Forky Phase (Patreon)

I've been talking to a lot of my writing buddies lately about what I've recently been referring to as the "Forky Stage." Now I'd like to be clear--this stage has long been a part of my process, it's just that until recently, I didn't have a good name for it.

There comes a time in any project where I've worked on it so much for so long that I'm too close and I can no longer tell if the book is good or not. This isn't me being coy or fishing for compliments or even true despair over the book--I literally can't tell. It could be great. It could be trash. I have no idea. And oddly, that's usually when I know it's ready to hand off to someone else--my agent, my editor, or my group of readers. The book is done, at least for now, when I hit Forky Phase.

When you're working on a big project like a novel, there are a lot of times where you'll very naturally have a crisis of faith. Is this book any good? Am I any good at this writing thing? Why am I even doing this? Who cares? What's the point? 

Any reasonable person would walk away at this point. Sometimes I wonder if writers are reasonable. People always talk about being a "real writer" and they feel like they are a real writer when they hit any number of personal benchmarks--publication, payment, holding a book in their hands, or seeing it in a bookstore. 

To me all of those are great achievements, but I know any number of real writers who haven't been published yet or seen their books in a store. To me you're a real writer when you are totally unreasonable about it. When you don't get up and walk away when everything around you is telling you there's no point. That's what makes a writer to me--the inability to walk away, even when there doesn't seem to be any point to anything you're doing except to ease some unknown thing inside you.

I would write, even if no one read a single word. Even if I never typed at my laptop or put a pen to paper, I'd make up stories in my head. Always have, always will.

There is something inside me that needs to make stories. I can't explain it. But I know the best writing days are when that thing and I are in perfect alignment, and it's more like I'm channeling voices than making things up. 

All of this brings to mind a moment from when I was a teenager--I was practicing guitar in my room. I very briefly thought learning it would be a good idea (it was not), and my mom passed by my room and caught me practicing. She made some off hand comment that she likely doesn't remember about a family friend, and how you could tell the difference between a musician and everyone else when you saw him, because he never put his guitar down. If one was there, it was in his hands. I've always wondered--compulsion or passion? Sometimes the line between them is fine at best.

The downside of that brief interaction was it put the nail in my guitar practicing days. (A great loss, I'm sure.) Before you start painting my mom with the "dream killer" brush, don't, because she realized it for what it was--something I was vaguely interested in, and not an actual dream or passion project. Anytime I would call her in my college days, panicking over my student loans and the ridiculousness of getting a creative degree that held zero assurances of a job, she talked me down. "Learning is never wasted" has ever been her motto. And yes, I stopped playing the guitar, because I realized she was right. I wasn't passionate about it. Even as a hobby. I didn't have any drive to pick up an instrument any time I walked into a room.

Now, put me in a room with a stack of books and time me to see how long it takes before I pick one up. Seconds. Minutes if I'm trying to be polite.

Crises of faith while pursuing something you're passionate about are normal. They aren't the same thing as the Forky Phase to me, either. They feel different. That might just be because I know myself and my process enough to know that I do this at the end of writing/editing books and it means I'm done. But I just think they're simply different things that happen to share similarities. 

There's a little voice inside you saying, "you can do this!" and that voice can be really quiet sometimes. The world is very loud. People around you--sometimes even people you love--might be saying something else. That it's time to give up. That you can't do this. That the odds are stacked against you. And part of you starts to wonder if they're right, which makes them extra loud in your head, and they drown your little voice out.

So what do you do when you can't hear that supportive voice? I can't necessarily give you that answer, but I can tell you what I do. Sometimes I google, "how to become a goat herder." No joke. Did you know you can own a goat franchise in my state? I even have a company name. "Totes My Goats" and they would wear matching hoodies. I do this because it reminds me that even though I think I'm capable of having other jobs and careers, I don't actually want to do any of them. Writing, even on the hard days, is what I want to do. 

Also, goats can be jackasses. Adorable jackasses, but they are work.

The other thing I do, and this is my most common response, is text a friend. Usually one of my writing buddies who are all too familiar with crises of faith. Someone loud outside your head that will shout, "You can do this. You've done it before, you'll do it again. I believe in you, you gorgeous goblin, you." I have a carefully curated support system for such things, and they all know I'd be there for them for the same thing. Because I DO believe in them and I know what it feels like, those loud-voices-of-dissent moments.

What happens when I can't do any of those things? I rely on spite. On pig headed stubbornness. A lot of people told me I can't or couldn't do this, and I'd like them to hold my beer while I smash it. Petty, perhaps. I don't care. It gets the job done. 

For the Forky Moments? Well, I have a carefully curated group there as well, people to hand the book off to who either love me and will kindly tell me if it needs work, or respect me professionally and will kindly tell me it needs work. Or tell me I smashed it and buy me a beer.

As a creator, you might not have a Forky Phase...but I bet you have crises of faith on the regular. And maybe you're new to this and you haven't made the right friends yet--the friends that will support you in a low moment. (I mean, if you're having too many of those, I also recommend therapy. Therapy is awesome. I also also recommend the book Writing from the Inside Out by Palumbo, a screenwriter and therapist.) 

But if you hit one of those moments, and you need someone to shout support and you don't have anyone, find me. On here, on Twitter, of IG. You don't have to tell me what's going on specifically if you don't want to. Just say you need a pep talk. When you just need one person on this earth to tell you that you can do it. That you're a glorious jewel-toned pegasus, ready to soar above the things holding you down. That you're a spectacular bog witch, ready to rise above. Or a beautiful tentacle monster who, after a much needed rest and some hydration, will come at the world like a spider monkey all hyped up on Mountain Dew*.

Sometimes we all need one voice in the darkness, and my friends, I'm happy to be yours.

-Lish

*I totally stole the spider monkey thing from Talladega Nights.