I was talking about how writers minds work the other day, and how trusting yourself is important.
How much a writer needs to trust their own brain to do what needs to be done. Some days are infinitely better than others in the trust department!
Thing is, anything creative requires a certain amount of trust. If you over think everything, you never get off the X. So at some point to write, draw, paint, write a song, play an instrument, make a movie, act … whatever your creative outlet is, at some point you just have to do it and trust your brain knows more than it’s letting on. 🙂
Or, you can sit there are be one of those people who tells everyone they’re going to [fill in whatever] one day.
Don’t be that guy. Just do it and see what happens. Trust me, no matter what it is, the first effort will be SHIT. It’s supposed to be SHIT. It’s how you grow and learn. Never be afraid to be shit at anything. 🙂

On that note, and fully embracing the shitasticness of life (that’s a word, because I said it’s a word – fight me!), today I finished the FIRST DRAFT of Lure the Lie, my kiwi set spy novel. And people, let me tell ya, it’s shitasticness in many ways but none of that matters.
Why?
Because I wrote it.
I didn’t mutter on about how I’m “going to write a spy novel one day” … I sat my arse down and I wrote it. Now that I have a completed first draft. Now, I can make it better. I get to play with it, and shine it, and tweak scenes, and talk to Pete about spy stuff (I love doing that!) and throw it at perfectly reasonable people and demand to know if it makes sense.
The perfectly reasonable people know who they are and two of them are now in possession of this shitty as fuck first draft. They’re my first line, the ones that will have questions and query scenes and poke pointy sticks at things.
I didn’t expect to be able to get to this point this year but I am so darned pleased that I have.
Shitastic is the absolute best description of 2020.

It’s my birthday next weekend and I really wanted a first draft by then. Tick!
Considering I was nowhere near that stage at the end of October. Also, half way through November I didn’t like the POV so re-wrote the first 30K. To finish up, just over 70K (not including Snakebyte, this is the shortest book I’ve ever written) today, well that was magic! Writer magic.
I wanted something shorter and something Kiwi. I just ticked those boxes.