Over the past few days I’ve had a lot of time to think about my novel.

Not in that excited way I used to—where scenes would play out in my head and i couldn’t wait to put pen to paper. It’s more of that quieter—heavier, kind of thought.

Almost as if I’m the beta reader trying to figure out where the shift happend.

At one point, writing brought me so much joy. It wasn’t that stressful everything has to be perfect situation. Just the simple excitement of building characters and their world and writing how they experience life.

Especially my main female character.

She was always the easiest, to write. In some ways she felt like a reflection of me— not entirely, but enough that I could connect with how he operated.

Her reaction made sense to me. She felt real to me.

Writing her felt like talking with a reflection of a deeper part of myself.

But along the way, it stopped feeling like a reflection.

It’s a strange thing—reading your own story and realizing the character on the page isn’t the one you meant to write.

When I take the time to go back and reread parts of the story now, she doesn’t sound like the girl I created. The dialogue feels off.

Her choices are unfamiliar.

I admit, part of the shift was my own doing.

The more the story grew, the more help I asked for. Not only the small suggestions but the plot devices. Different character directions, scene changes, even how certain moment should be “improved.”

And at first it felt helpful. Having something to point out problems or suggest alternatives to have the story be easier to manage.

Sadly, the more I relied on that correction, the quicker the story drifted away until it completely started spiraling.

My characters were reacting in ways that made sense structurally, but not emotionally. The once alive dialogue now was flat, cleaner even.

Eventually the more I reread, the more obvious it became— uncomfortably so.

I hated it. The parts of the story I thought I loved felt constructed and stiff.

Gone was the voice of MY character and in it’s place a character who was never mine to begin with.

Getting outside help isn’t always bad. Sometimes another prospective is useful. Sometimes it can show you things you might’ve missed.

But there is a line between getting help with a story and losing your voice inside it.

Unconscientiously I crossed that line without realizing it.

And it hurts.

I mean the characters are still there. The world built is still there. The Twenty-Two chapters of jumbled up care still exists on the page.

But the voice that wrote the beginning is so unrecognizable now.

Lately I’ve been wondering if scrapping it is my answer or if maybe the real need is finding that voice from scratch again.

Not forcing it.

Not correcting it.

Just letting my characters speak the way they want. They way they should’ve in the first place.

I don’t know what direction I’m going to take or what it looks like yet.

But right now, that’s the question I’ll discover with my characters.

More Soon,

Quill