Sometimes I write stuff that’s not very good.

At this point, if you’re not a writer, you might have one of two reactions.

1. Wait, I’ve read your book. It’s good!
2. I’ve read your book. You’re right.

But I’m not talking about the finished product today, so regardless of what you think of Planetside, set that aside.

I’m talking about the day to day work of producing a novel. I’m working on Planetside 3 (Not it’s real title. I’m bad at titles, but that’s a story for another day). It’s the summer, so I don’t have a day job (I’m a teacher) and I’m writing about 2000 words a day.

Here’s the thing. A lot of days, those words aren’t very good.

And that’s fine. I’m a pro writer. This will be my third published novel. I get it. First drafts are supposed to suck, blah blah blah.

More than that, rationally, I know that it *doesn’t* suck, comparatively speaking. Planetside 3 is better at this stage of its development than Spaceside was. The first draft of Spaceside was so bad that I ditched it and started over. I called that first draft a zero draft. And even with that, Planetside 3 is better at this point than Spaceside was on the second time through.

But it’s still bad.

And while that’s not significant when it comes to what the final product will look like, it does have effects. One of the effects is this: it’s hard to get motivated to write every day when what you’re writing isn’t good.

Before we go off the wrong direction, yes, I have to write every day. I’m a teacher with the summer off and I’ve got a deadline for this book. So I have to write every day (or most days). If I don’t, I won’t finish. If I don’t finish the draft on time, I won’t have the time I need to revise it into something good.

So how do you do it? How do you show up at your writing time and get motivated, knowing that what you make in that time probably won’t be very good? I’ve been struggling with this all week.

I like to say that the solution to any problem is to write the crap out of it. You can make anything work if you write it well enough. But what happens when you can’t?

For me, complaining about it makes it worse. Because while I’m struggling with this, there are a thousand people who would look at me and say ‘You’re getting paid to write books! I would kill to be in your spot.’ And they would, and that’s 100% fair. I personally know dozens of writers who would do whatever it took–spend as much time as they had to–to make it as a published writer. They’d look at what I’m dealing with and scoff.

But that doesn’t make it easier for me to put my ass in the seat to make words. It just makes me feel worse about it when I fail.

So why am I writing this? I’m writing it because I have to believe I’m not the only one who has this issue. I’m not the only one looking at the 500 not-very-good words I’ve made so far today, knowing that I need 2000, and wondering what the hell I’m doing.

So what’s the answer? I wish I had it. For me, it’s still a work in progress. But here’s where I’m at right now:

1. Trust in future you
2. Enjoy the good moments.

I’ve done this before. I’ve written drafts that weren’t good and then turned them into something I liked. I’m giving future me a bad draft to work with, but future me is good at that.

And it’s not all bad. There are good lines in this draft. Good moments. Even a few good scenes. I’ve figured things out. Just today, I figured out the arc for a secondary character and wrote the end of it. Sure, I have to go back and fix everything in every encounter with this character leading up to this moment, but that’s easy. That’s what second drafts are for. Right now, I know where this character ends, and that’s huge. It’s going to be great when I get it done.

So that’s it. I’m going to write 2000 words today, and most of them are going to be bad. But those ones…those ones aren’t. They might look bad, if I let you read them (HA! Not happening!) but they aren’t. They’re perfect, even if I need to change them a little bit later. Because they make the story better.