Terror of the Trousers
Making writing goals that don't scare you silly
With the Spring Equinox, the shadows recede.
In recent weeks, I’ve returned to the sewing machine. I knitted a honey-colored hat a few weeks back because it was the only optimistic action I could fathom. It helped. Using my hands has brought comfort when my mind can’t contain what’s happening in the world.
My sewing life has been on and off, more off than on, since I learned to make basic clothes and stuffed animals with my mother’s help. My first real project was a pink flannel nightgown with a ruffle, which I made alongside a friend, my mom showing us the tricky bits.
I learned knitting from my grandmother, who helped me make an orange strip the size of a bookmark, which I used as a hallway runner in my dollhouse. After this success, I forgot knitting until she died just before I left for college. I dove back into yarn shops, learning in fits and starts, trying to stay connected to her knowledge.
It struck me this week, as I sewed a test pair of trousers for a fit check, that writing is very much like making clothes, with one critical disadvantage: it’s impossible to try a piece of writing on. We must forge ahead and use the good material from the beginning.
For the past few years, I have been working up my courage to sew a pair of trousers. My anxiety about this project has paralyzed me entirely. I’ve made button-down shirts, dresses with and without patterns, jackets and a variety of other projects. This project is less complex that some things I’ve made before. But the last time I tried to sew trousers, thinking I’d made them quite large, I couldn’t even get them over my hips. The beautiful linen I’d ordered from the UK went straight in the donation bag. I haven’t attempted another pair since.
This reminded me of a Dr. Suess story that gave me nightmares when I stayed at my grandmother’s house as a child.
Remember this one? The eerie nighttime setting? For those who don’t, What Was I Scared of? follows an animal protagonist who spots a pair of floating pants out in the dark woods. Understandably, they get scared and run away. The pants give chase for much of the book. Despite the amicable ending, the image of eerie green pants hovering haunted me in the bedroom away from home.
The failed linen pants have been chasing me, too.
This is very much like the writing life.
I’ve been struggling with novels for decades, and as much as we want to remain optimistic, it’s hard not to let past fumbles haunt us like ghostly pants. Working through one novel, only to find the idea had soured and no longer interested me was the death of one book. The realization that I was really just processing a breakup and not actually constructing a plot was the end of another. And more recently, having not yet found a home for my finished novel has made me wary of completing the current one. What if it meets the same ambivalent fate of “Beautiful writing, but it’s not for us”?
When I threw the corset-tight failed linen trousers in the bin, I neglected to analyze what had gone wrong. With time I see I was pursuing two incompatible goals: learn a new seaming technique AND make a garment that fits perfectly that I would like to wear.
Writing gets stymied when we want a perfect result in the first draft. If I focus on making the language beautiful before I even know what the story is about, the result is unsatisfying. Perhaps it reads nicely, but it has no guts, a bit like beautiful fabric hanging on you lifeless, like a sack. Thinking about the polish of the final product takes away the opportunity to make a mess and learn something on the way.
Learning has galvanized me against my trouser terror.
Just as I take drafts to build a book, I’m now making the trousers in sequential passes. Earlier this week, I traced the pattern onto fresh paper in between two sizes to suit my measurements. Another day, I cut this version out of test fabric and tried it on. My only intention was to spend 30-60 minutes a day sewing and to learn something.
Whereas before I’d been berating myself “Oh ffs just make the stupid pants,” only to ignore the sewing machine and the fabric draped over it a few more days, this hooked me in. One small thing a day, with the focus on learning.
The test pair fit, and yesterday I cut the final fabric. It’s a different pattern than the dreaded linen pair was made of, but I’m still scared. Even so, the desire to learn is stronger. And — oh the irony — this pair of trousers will be green.
Novels used to feel this way.
The first time I did NaNoWriMo, twenty years ago this November, I was afraid I didn’t have enough words to fill a novel. I wrote an abominable book simply to see if the words would show up when I sat at the keyboard. They did, even if the story meandered further and further into nonsense.
After that, I wanted to write a book I felt proud of. This took longer. It took more tries, more stories, more practice. But now I’m no longer afraid of writing novels. I’m afraid of writing novels that end up discarded and forgotten.
But this is the fear we all face when we start. That the time is wasted if we don’t get the result we want. I don’t believe that anymore.
We learn something from every mistake.
Break the process down.
With the trouser terror, I’d gone against my own advice and simply written “sew pants” in my mental to-do list. Every time it popped up in my memory, I froze. Not until I transformed the project into “show up to sew for 30-60 minutes a day and learn something” did I feel empowered to tackle the project.
Do you have a similar task in your head with writing? “Finish book,” “Outline novel” and “Plan revision” are very similar to “sew the pants.” They’re intimidating, with no way in. By shifting the phrasing of your next step, your writing can shift, too.
Workshop: Making Manageable Writing Goals
Next Friday, 28 March, I’ll be running a workshop for Book Alchemy members on how to take a big writing project and transform it into a series of milestones you can reasonably achieve.
I like to look at 10-Week timelines within my projects, as they are long enough to get something series done while not feeling impossibly far off in the future.
We’ll meet at 9am Pacific / Noon Eastern / 16:00 GMT / 17:00 CET Friday the 28th.
If you’re a paid member of Book Alchemy, you can grab the event details and RSVP below. If you’re not yet a member, subscribe below to join us.
In addition, if you’d like support achieving these goals, the Spring session of Your Writing Year is now open for enrollment. Get 10 weeks of accountability, support, and inspiration to reach your goal once you set it. We start March 31.
Winter Session members have gotten amazing results in our ten weeks. People have:
Completed first drafts
Sent stories out to competitions and publications
Planned and begun revisions
Re-started writing routines
Prepared to query agents