So my book is kind of bad... | Writing Insecurities, Struggles, etc.

A draft of Jalen’s new novel, “Saltbirds,” isn’t failing because the prose is unreadable—it’s failing because it doesn’t generate feeling. After rereading the first 20,000 words, she reports feeling “nothing” emotionally, unlike her earlier novels “Holding a Ghost” and “Honey Vinegar,” which made her feel something for the characters and the events as she read. That emotional disconnect matters because her writing process relies on a physical, embodied empathy: when a character “clicks,” she feels their pain in her body and the story gains momentum. With Rowan, the “Saltbirds” protagonist, she can’t locate the sadness that usually unlocks that empathy, even though she’s interested in the character and finds many lines and passages strong on the sentence level.

The insecurity driving this moment isn’t the old fear of being a bad writer; it’s a more rational-sounding doubt about whether the project itself is fundamentally misfiring. She distinguishes between insecurity as irrational self-critique and insecurity as a signal worth listening to—especially when rereading repeatedly fails to recalibrate her relationship to the book. In her case, the usual remedy (reading back to see what’s working) backfired: the draft didn’t just feel imperfect; it felt inert.

She then inventories what seems structurally off. “Saltbirds” is relationship-heavy, with multiple threads that are closely connected but don’t “braid” into plot movement. Instead of events that escalate and cause change, the book cycles through interactions—rotating through characters and relationships—without enough external or internal “spark” between threads. She also suspects the novel may be more plotless and deeply internal than she expected, and she’s wrestling with why that shift feels threatening when she previously loved plotless work.

A key pressure point is comparison. She’s trying to replicate what worked in “Honey Vinegar,” mapping characters and scenes as if they should deliver the same kind of emotional payoff. That comparison, combined with the stakes of a likely debut trajectory, makes the draft feel like it must justify itself immediately. She also points to a reluctance to experiment and to keep writing when the draft isn’t working—yet she can’t identify exactly what’s missing.

Her search for a craft answer runs into a wall: she believes there’s no single writing tip that can fix what she’s experiencing, describing it as an energetic “crackle” problem—multiple elements demanding connection—rather than a solvable mechanical flaw. She cites a CBC article quote attributed to Anna Ling K: the power of a story comes from the heat created when seemingly unrelated things must be connected.

With that in mind, she chooses action over analysis. She’s pausing her usual approach and committing to “light” NaNoWriMo, aiming to write every day to force immersion and see whether momentum returns. The plan is to keep hacking away, accept that much of what she writes will be bad, and potentially rewrite the beginning entirely—because the only way to find what’s wrong, she concludes, is to keep writing until the missing connection finally appears.