Words by Lucy Nimmo // Photo by Oktay KOPCAK
On a random Tuesday, about a month ago, I sat at a local café and finished the first draft of my debut novel. The remnants of a long black sat next to the words I’d been waiting to write for three years, ‘The End’. It didn’t feel extraordinary; I didn’t have the urge to tell the couple next to me what I’d just achieved, and I even hesitated texting my boyfriend. It’s what I imagine finishing a university degree feels like. Hitting upload on that last assignment, the past three years drowning in studies, pulling your weight in group assessments, dragging yourself to lectures on Friday afternoons only because attendance is mandatory – all leading up to this anticlimactic upload. I closed my laptop, paid for my coffee then printed the manuscript. It was the weight of my manuscript, printed in my palms, when I realised how grateful I was for allowing myself to be a beginner, to be seen trying something.
Now re-reading the second draft of this novel, like most emerging writers, I have been violently humbled. The first three chapters were deleted and will never see the light of day; darlings have been killed or merged into one character. Comments in the margins vary between “this is way too cringe,” “ew,” “please fix this!” “WTF?!” and “for the love of GOD stop mentioning his eyes!” You could write a novella from all the scenes where somebody’s eyes lingered, softened or widened. Despite these critiques, if I put aside the first third of the book and reach roughly chapter 11, I start to notice something – past Lucy’s writing is getting better.
Chapter by chapter, I can see the changes in my prose. Instead of telling my reader that my protagonist is anxious, I’m showing his restless leg and the picking of his cuticles. Sentences are starting to flow better; there’s less red pen staining my page. There’s less talk about eyes and what those eyes are doing (thank God!). I can see the version of me that had just started her degree, the girl who was too scared to call herself a writer, she hadn’t yet read Stephan King’s On Writing. The beginner who forced herself to type each paragraph, pulling herself away from the deadly curse that is editing as you go. She dared to be a beginner. I still am one, just a beginner with a finished draft.
These days, it feels like everyone wants to be an expert at something before giving the thousands of hours it takes to become one. It’s like everyone wants to be the next Sabrina Carpenter at their chosen hobby or vocation. Successful overnight, out of nowhere. That is, if Sabrina’s nowhere was spending countless days writing her music, ignoring the rejection pile, chipping away at her goal, no matter how far away or impossible it may have seemed. James Clear said it best, “get 1% better every day.” It’s never easy, and it’s never overnight.
There’s a lot of discourse online about how cringeworthy it is to be seen trying. I think the opposite, trying to become good at something is less embarrassing than daydreaming about a goal you’re too proud to be seen trying. Is it because you’re worried about what someone from your High School thinks of you? Or is it that little voice in your head that kind of sounds like Regina George, telling you to ‘give up’ before you’ve even started. I’m here to remind you that Regina is wrong, and everyone else is probably too busy worrying about themselves to even bother reading that Substack you just started.
Embarrassment and being a beginner are like an enemy-to-lover trope, where they’re forced to work together, and the hotel room only has one bed. Embarrassment is the price you must pay to become great, to get that book published, to start that small business, to get that dream job. Instead of getting lost in that echo chamber of “that’s so cringe”, use those thirty minutes you usually spend doom scrolling and pick up those knitting needles, start sketching or go for that godamn run you said you were going to do last week. I can guarantee you’ll probably miss a few stitches, tear out a few pages of your sketchbook or struggle to reach that first kilometre. But imagine how much better you’ll be this time next year.
Don’t start on Monday, don’t start next month, don’t wait for 2026, start today. I’m grateful for the version of me who was brave enough to start typing three years ago.
