Freedom inside a framework
Finding the middle way
When I was a serious, driven (read: borderline humourless) 20-year-old aspiring writer, I got my dream opportunity: 9 months working alongside my favourite author—a famous bestselling novelist—assisting him in his work and writing my own novel under his guidance.
He wrote at a custom-built desk in a sprawling studio named after the estate in one of his novels. It was filled with floor to ceiling bookshelves, including one that was a secret door into a hidden room. The many editions of his many books were on these shelves. Detailed outlines of future novels hung from the ceiling, lined up like airplanes on a runway.
At my own small desk, I answered reader mail (it came in envelopes with stamps, stacks and stacks of it), tried to write my first grown-up novel, and quietly descended into an existential crisis.
I was plagued by self-doubt with every sentence I tried to write. This was my make-or-break chance to prove to myself and the person I looked up to most in the world that I had what it took to be a novelist and that he’d been right to invest in me; my need to succeed was so high that every word I tried to write was a torment. I gave myself no permission to fail, not even for a day or a paragraph. I focused entirely on results, and the results were baaad. Until I eventually concluded that I did not, after all, have what it took.
The apprenticeship was half over before my mentor told me to ditch the novel I’d written 20 pages of in 5 months and write something that was completely me: a character who was me, a situation that was mine. So I began a novel about a young woman who wants to be a writer all her life, goes to work for a famous bestselling novelist, and is depressed and insecure and incapable of writing. (Only I set it in 19th century France so it wasn’t autobiographical at all.)
I eventually finished that novel (you will never read it) and began another one. But long after the apprenticeship ended, writing continued to be so, so painful for me.
Then, gradually, out of desperation, I started to reconnect with the part of myself that I’d written from before I decided I had to become a serious grown-up writer. The part that had me discovering stories for the fun of it. The part that made me want to be a writer in the first place.
I actively took on an unlearning process to strip myself of the rules of good writing and the expectations of excellence. I nurtured my perfectionist self through the discomfort of learning how to be messy, uncertain, possibly even wrong. I let go of my need for control, embraced process, accepted myself as I was, and accepted my writing for whatever it turned out to be that day.
I was casting off rigidity in all areas of my life—leaving a restrictive religion, exploring pleasures and freedoms previously denied me, daring to colour outside lines, trust my own voice, disobey rules, stray from the linear. The liberation in my writing life paralleled this more global discovery, and I think it was a necessary process of healing and reintegration.
But writing without structure eventually turned out to be as terrible as writing without freedom. My characters tended to have no plots to follow or stakes to drive them, and I spent most of my writing sessions feeling lost, wandering in aimless circles with no clear intention. Which led to dreading the page and avoiding the page and procrastinating to ensure I’d run out of time for the page. Until eventually I concluded I did not, after all, have what it took.
The answer, of course, was in the middle of these pendulum swings. Freedom and structure. Right and left brain. Analytical mind and intuition. Yin and yang. Balance.
All of this is the big long backstory to how I finally learned to harness freedom inside structure, get out of my own way, and show up for my writing practice and my novels effectively and sustainably.
It’s also the foundation of the novel coaching program I created many years after all this, when I’d finally completed three other novels (none of them set in 19th century France). One was published this year, the next is coming out in 2026, and the third is lined up waiting its turn…like an airplane on a runway.
Novel Alchemy is a 3-month small group coaching program offered through Sarah Selecky Writing School, bringing mindfulness and supportive structure to the process of writing a fast, free discovery draft of a novel. I love it so much, partly because I know it would have revolutionized my life to have this program all those years ago, but also because now it is revolutionizing other people’s lives.
Together we recover from creative traumas, establish a flourishing relationship with creative practice, and lay down the raw first draft of novels in a really short period of time. It’s supportive, transformative, intimate, intense, real, deep.
My co-facilitator is my sister Leah Fae, a yoga and meditation teacher whose breathwork and guided visualizations are incredible for helping us get out of our analytical brains and create an embodied container for grounding and nervous system regulation as we write.
It isn’t magic, but freedom inside a gentle framework does create results that can feel a lot like magic. Freedom to let go and follow your intuitive nudges; a framework of time limits, story structure, weekly group coaching sessions and daily accountability that enables you to trust that your wanderings on the page will add up to viable story by the end.
Our next cohort starts September 11 and finishes December 11.
If you’ve been wanting to write a novel and you’ve struggled to get traction or you feel daunted by the magnitude of the goal, come talk to me to see if Novel Alchemy might be a good fit for you. We’re accepting registrations until September 6.
Warmly,
Heidi
Did you calculate that 1998 was a long time ago and wonder why my first published novel only came out this year? It’s a bit humbling to be qualified to be a guest on a podcast called Rejected Central, but qualified I am, and in this episode I tell some of that long story of persistence, faith-keeping, and, yes, rejection…including some of what I had to reject along the way.
This was a fun in-person kitchen table interview with writer and podcaster Brent van Staalduinen. Listen here!
Oh, yeah. As simple as… Pi.
“The answer, of course, was in the middle of these pendulum swings. Freedom and structure. Right and left brain. Analytical mind and intuition. Yin and yang. Balance.”
And there it is.