Learning to Write at a Gallop

I’m starting to think my imaginary world might actually need to exist outside my head. Like, in actual words. On actual pages. That other people might someday read.

Fuck.

So I’ve written just over 20,000 words of my current draft. Twenty thousand. A small novella’s worth of words about people who don’t exist doing things that never happened in a world I made up. My original twelve chapters? Tossed into the digital void. Gone. And good riddance, honestly. Now I’m hard stuck at introducing my two main characters, sitting astride my metaphorical horse at the starting line, just waiting for the beast beneath me to bolt and off we’ll go again. Just… waiting. Staring at the blinking cursor. Wondering why the hell I thought I could do this in the first place.

“Just let loose and write,” my trusted friend (the only one I’ve shared drafts with) told me when I finally confessed my paralysis. “Make a mess. See what’s wrong, broken, nonsensical and then loop back to fix it.”

Sure. Just let loose. As if it were that simple to silence the endless stream of criticism flowing through my brain every time I put words on a page. As if I could just turn off the part of me that sees every repetition, every clunky transition, every moment where the perfect word hovers just beyond my grasp but I’m too afraid to stop and search for it because what if I never start again?

The two main characters are there, hovering just on the edge of becoming real people. I can almost hear their voices. I can almost see how they move through the world. But translating them from abstract concepts in my mind to actual flesh-and-blood people on the page feels like trying to catch smoke with my bare hands. I think, maybe, I’m afraid of them. Afraid that once they’re fully realized, they’ll take the story places I didn’t plan for. Or worse, that they’ll remain flat, dull, uninteresting—the literary equivalent of cardboard cutouts propped up against my carefully constructed world.

But here’s the thing about writing: it’s a lot like riding a horse.

And I would know, because I’m an enthusiastic citygirl equestrian who has spent enough time in the saddle to understand that both writing and riding require you to balance control with surrender in ways that feel completely unnatural at first.

When you’re learning to ride, you start at a walk. Everything is manageable. You have time to think about your posture, your hands, your heels. Then comes the trot, and suddenly everything is bumpy and jarring. Your body gets tossed around. You focus intensely on maintaining proper form while being shaken like a martini. You overthink every movement. You try to control everything.

That’s where I’ve been with my writing. Stuck at the trot. Bouncing uncomfortably between words, unable to find a rhythm, overthinking every decision. Should this be a comma or a period? Is this the right word? Have I used this phrase before? Maybe I should check. Let me just scan back through the previous paragraphs to make sure I haven’t already used “suddenly” or “realized” or any other word that my brain has suddenly (fuck, there it is again) realized (goddammit) might be repetitive.

It’s exhausting, and it’s getting me nowhere.

But then there’s the canter. The magical, transformative canter.

Any equestrian will tell you that the shift from trot to canter is like crossing a threshold. One moment you’re bouncing awkwardly, fighting for control, and the next… you’re flying. The jarring motion smooths out into something fluid and natural. Your body stops fighting and starts flowing with the horse. It feels like freedom.

I remember the first time I experienced a proper canter on a spirited horse. I was in Cuba as a preteen, and I’d demanded a more exciting mount than the placid pony they’d initially assigned me. The groom tried to warn me, “El loco… el loco,” gesturing at the horse with expressive concern, but I was young and stupid and wanted excitement.

That horse took the bit in its teeth the moment we were alone and ran straight for a cliff edge.

I had to kick it hard in the neck to get it to pivot—an action that still makes me sick when I recall it. But I learned something crucial in that moment of terror: sometimes you have to let go of perfect control to save yourself. Sometimes the only way forward is to work with the wild energy rather than trying to completely contain it.

My draft is that wild horse. It wants to run, and I’ve been yanking back on the reins, trying to make it trot perfectly instead of letting it gallop where it wants to go. My 20,000 words sit there, waiting for me to let the next 20,000 burst forth in a messy, exhilarating rush. The characters are saddled up, ready to bolt if I’d just loosen my white-knuckled grip on their development.

So I’m learning (slowly, painfully, with much whining) to write at a gallop.

I’m forcing myself to push forward without looking back. To ignore the repetitive words and phrases that make me cringe. To leave [BETTER WORD HERE] placeholders rather than spending twenty minutes consulting a thesaurus. To trust that I can fix the mess later, but only if I create the mess first.

The drafts are mostly fine, but there are some painful word/phrase repetitions where my brain wanted to stop to look for synonyms but I was afraid I’d get hung up for too long. And you know what? Those repetitions haven’t actually killed anyone. The awkward transitions haven’t caused the literary apocalypse. The world continues to spin despite my occasionally writing “suddenly” twice in one paragraph. Even when I’ve used “realized” so many times in one chapter that it’s basically become a drinking game: “Take a shot every time the protagonist has a fucking epiphany!” (Or don’t, because alcohol poisoning is bad.)

It’s shockingly hard to translate the big picture in my head into coherent prose, even with all my careful worldbuilding and character development. I have partial aphantasia, which means I don’t see vivid mental images, yet somehow I’m trying to describe things I can’t literally “see” in my mind. It’s like trying to draw a map from memory of a place you’ve only ever felt. Difficult, yes, but not impossible if you stop demanding perfection from the first stroke.

My inner critic is a prissy, technically correct equestrian instructor in jodhpurs and a helmet, clipboard in hand, calling out every flaw in my form. “Your heels aren’t down! Your hands are uneven! You’re using the word ‘realize’ for the third time in two pages! Your protagonist doesn’t feel consistent! This dialogue is wooden! Your world-building is showing!”

But my wild draft horse doesn’t give a shit about proper form. It wants to run, and maybe—just maybe—if I let it, we’ll end up somewhere more interesting than if I’d stayed safe at the trot. It wants to gallop off with my main characters and finally, finally let them speak with their own voices instead of the hesitant, second-guessed whispers I’ve been allowing them so far.

My 20,000 words are like the warm-up lap around the paddock. I can feel the horse beneath me getting restless, muscles tensing, ready to bolt the moment I loosen my grip on the reins. I’m terrified and thrilled in equal measure. Because what if, when I finally let go, the story takes off in a direction I never planned? What if my carefully constructed plot flies right out the window as my characters decide they have better ideas? What if I end up with something wildly different than what I imagined?

(But also: what if it’s better?)

So I’m learning to gallop. I’ve written ten thousand messy words in the past week, more than I wrote in the previous month of careful trotting. They’re not perfect. There are repetitions and awkward phrasings and places where I’ve written [INSERT BETTER DESCRIPTION OF SAILING VESSEL HERE] because I didn’t want to stop the flow to research 16th century ship terminology.

But you know what? It feels like fucking flying.

There’s a freedom in embracing the mess. In acknowledging that the first draft is supposed to be bad. That its only job is to exist, to get the story out of my head and onto the page where I can actually see and shape it.

Ernest Hemingway supposedly said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” And while we can debate whether Hemingway is the best role model for… well, anything really, the man had a point. First drafts are shit. They’re supposed to be shit. Their shittiness is not a bug; it’s a feature.

My maritime world with its complicated magic systems and elaborate political structures and carefully plotted character arcs deserves to exist outside the index cards and wall notes. It deserves the messy freedom of a galloping first draft, even if that draft is riddled with repetitive phrases and clunky dialogue and characters who haven’t quite found their voices yet.

So I’ve let go of the reins. I’ve stopped yanking my creative horse back to a careful trot every time it wants to run. I’ve embraced the terrifying thrill of writing badly, knowing I can always circle back later to clean up the mess. I’m sitting here, hands forward, giving my imagination its head, waiting for that 20,000-word count to double as my two main characters finally decide to step fully onto the page and introduce themselves properly.

And honestly? When it happens (not if, but when), it will feel like I’m finally learning to write.

Not perfectly. Not even well, necessarily.

But fully. Freely. At a gallop.

With the wind in my hair and the ground flying beneath me and yes, occasionally, the terrifying sense that I might be heading straight for a cliff edge.

But I’ve survived wild horses before. I’ll survive this one too.

And who knows? Maybe this runaway draft will take me somewhere even better than I imagined.