Illustration by the Author · © 2025, Andrea N. D’Angelo — All rights reserved
· ★ ·
15 December 2025
W
hat am I talking about? Well, this thing I’ve been circling for two days now. A problem of method, sure, but also of temperament. Like a dog pacing around a bone. Sniffing it, backing off, coming back… Unsure whether it’s food or a trap.
Yesterday it hit me that I’ve changed, as a writer. Not improved. Changed. I move slowly now, in the first draft. Painfully so. I write a scene, then stop. Think. I reread it once, twice, thrice… many times. I rework it. I poke at it, bruise it, rearrange it. Then I go walking in the woods, because that’s where I go when things don’t line up. I try to understand what’s wrong with that scene. And I do understand it, almost every time. Mercifully. The by-product of this obsessive grinding is that my first drafts come out stronger. Sharper. Less embarrassing.
Which sounds like a win.
And yet. Is it?
I’m not convinced it’s a bad thing. That’s a question for me, of course. Right? Well, this is how I wrote Imperfect Equilibrium — a strange novel, structurally dense, nothing like my fantasy work — and a good chunk of Sideralema, which I still consider one of my best books. That one is fantasy, no doubt about it. Resume: the last two novels. And even with Sideralema, the opening chapters were brutal. Slow. Heavy. The same kind of resistance I’m feeling now with The War of the Winds.
So no, I’m not panicking.
Still, I have a bad habit… a necessary one, for bad sometimes serves the scope. I feel the urge to interrogate my process while I’m inside it. Or after it. Even when I’m on its side, looking at it out of the vicious corner of my eye. And sometimes instead of it. Out of spite. I question how I live writing, not just how I do it. There’s a reason why my YouTube channel has that name, apart from presumption. I reflect. I brood. I prod myself with a pin. Look at it! I think. Look carefully, my dear friend… Improvement, for me, requires surveillance. Self-surveillance. Usually carried out in a forest, because walking clears my head in ways no desk ever has. Trees are very good listeners. They never interrupt. They don’t give advice, either. Ideal creatures.
So today a slow walk; low energy, already tired before starting. I told myself this isn’t working. Not now. Not for this part of The War of the Winds. Right now I should let the first draft run hotter. Faster. Sloppier. Fix it later, if later ever comes.
What I still don’t fully understand is why, when I was drafting Imperfect Equilibrium and Sideralema, I refused to leave behind anything that already felt wrong the moment it hit the page. The ugly bits. Those inflated. Or the ridiculous, redundant, questionable stuff. I stopped. I corrected. I thought again. I rewrote. I became convinced — and still am… such a delusional guy! — that a story grows better if I don’t let bad instincts accumulate. If I don’t drag along a tail of non-decisions born of inspiration that wanders off. Takes detours. Derails the draft while smiling innocently.
There’s a lot of truth in that. Too much, maybe.
So. Which approach is the right one?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that rigidity is poison in writing; experience drills this into you. It looks like discipline, but it behaves like cancer. It spreads. It hardens. Eventually the book collapses under its own rules.
Writing novels demands elasticity. Always. No exceptions.
I can’t say: From now on I do this. Or: From now on I do that. No matter if it’s this or that, it’s always too categorical. Turning methodical decisions into dogma would be fatal. Quietly lethal. Deadly as the bite of an Undead.
So what’s left. Both. Both approaches. Flawed and useful, the two of them. The only sane solution is to keep them alive at the same time and shift weight depending on where I am, sentence by sentence, while I work on The War of the Winds.
And right now, speed matters more than polish.
I’m going to write.