The Kick

Sep 7, 2026

This weekend, I had my first real writing kick in months, maybe years. This weekend, I wrote 11,365 words in 4 days. 

I've been spilling ink long enough to know that as a number, it doesn't actually mean much. I’ve filled whole notebooks with stuff that was summarized as ‘chatting about work while his mind raced…’. It might turn out to be nothing, but right now, I need to know what the conversation was to know if there’s going to be consequences to having tuned it out. Either way, it’s happening in the story right now. I’ll take a machete to it later. Right now, it could be in, so I’ve been trying to write it while it’s still fresh in my mind.

Over the years, I’ve struggled to describe my writing process to people. I’m a pretty thorough outliner: I’ve made floor plans of every apartment and house my characters go to, because I need to know what’s within their line of sight. I know how much they make, their favorite brands, that one thing they’re saving for because people act differently when money’s tight. That’s always been the excuse: I need to know the world because that shapes behavior. The plot being executed is characters behaving a certain way, reacting to events, to each other. I can outline events all I want, but the connective tissue needs to be there. When it’s not, and I try to write, sometimes a character pivots the whole thing, and I feel like I owe it to the research to follow them rather than trying to force them to stay within the story I outlined.

For months I've been hacking away at the two main characters of what I’m hoping will be my second book, and I’ve been struggling to gain traction. Instead, I keep getting dragged into research and backstory. It’s felt like writing is more of a compulsion or stimming rather than a project. All of that changed this weekend when 11,365 words spilled out of my head. 

This hasn’t happened to me in a long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever paid attention to my own process before, so no wonder it’s hard for me to describe. This is my updated theory: I think it’s hard for me to know what someone will say or do until I know what they’ve said or done. I need a handle on their regrets and triumphs and points of embarrassment that they still think about. That is what I’ve been working on for months. I’ve known it was never going to go into the final manuscript, but it’s not me wasting time. It’s setting up their foundation, and finally, it’s firm enough for them to stand on. And if it really gets out of hand, that’s what prequel books are for, right?