For the longest time, I couldn't bring myself to start writing a novel.

Don't get me wrong. I want to write a novel. I've got an informal checklist of things to accomplish during my lifetime. Writing a novel is on the list.

No, I couldn't begin writing a novel because I was worried that it wouldn't turn out well. That it would validate deeper fears about the quality of my own writing. That it would cross me off some cosmic list of potential authors.

I admit, these are silly fears. But I suspect they're not uncommon.

A little over a year ago, I gave myself a push—I joined a writing group and kicked off a draft of the book, fingers crossed that it would turn out well. If I were lucky, at the end of the process I'd make a few copy-edits and send it off for publication.

Well, I've written most of a draft now and that won't be happening. It's definitely not publishable in its current form.

I realized this early on, maybe halfway through the draft. Character arcs are half-developed. Some of the world-building needs deeper thought. It's readable, but not what I'd hoped it would be. Facing that was tough, and I was very tempted to quit. I had failed, right?

Fortunately, my writing group gave me just enough motivation to question giving up.

So I googled. What did other authors have to say about first drafts? How the heck are you supposed to write these things, anyway? Doing so, I ran across a quote from Shannon Hale. It went like this:

"When writing a first draft, I have to remind myself constantly that I'm only shoveling sand into a box so later I can build castles."

I was very taken with that. It was a way to understand what I was doing and view it as productive. Incremental, even.

I think that's the trouble with huge undertakings. They take a long time to resemble what you envision. When the intermediary stages are messy and progress is slow, it's easy to be discouraged. For me, viewing the mess as—well, not just "okay", but good. That was a crucial shift in mindset.

I had a similar situation at work, actually. We're starting to re-architect a huge, ancient piece of code. It will likely take months or even years. And I found that it inspired in people similar concerns that I had when I started writing the novel. What if...what if we draft up a re-architecture and it's not great? How should we view early brainstorms during this process?

Again, it was helpful to emphasize: sand in the box now. Sand-castles later.