Why My Writing Plans Are Top Secret

To wrap up January's theme of writing aspirations, here's what I'm going to tell you about my personal writing aspirations:

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Just to clarify, I do have writing aspirations for this year, but I won't tell you. I won't even tell my critique partner, my friends, my husband, my toddler, or even my private journal.

This year, I'm keeping secrets. My entire WIP is TOP SECRET. So classified I'm not even allowed to write notes about it. My timeline for this WIP is just as hush hush.

Source: giphy

Why? Because I've noticed in the past, whenever I tell people my ideas and plans, the project suddenly loses a little bit of the magic for me. Instead of enjoying my own creative freedom and exploration of the project, I start to worry that I'm not working quickly enough, and I'll disappoint the people cheering me on. I worry about whether they'll like what I'm writing. My mind skips over the messy discovery part of writing and goes straight into perfection mode. And then when things aren't perfect, I freeze.

But if no one knows my goals, plans, and ideas, I'm completely free. Free to discover. Free to fail. Free to make messes. Free to listen to what my characters want and what the story needs instead of what actual people want. The story is just for me. If it's a complete disaster, no one ever has to know. If I am driven by my passion, listen to my characters, and let creative freedom take this book to the finish line...and then I decide people can know about it, cool. But there's no pressure to get to that point.

I have a passion project, top secret, just for me. So don't ask me about it because I'll just blink at you and say, "What are you talking about?"

Source: giphy