Awkward Writing Novels & Stories

No claims. No calls to action. Just orientation. We include explicit disclaimers—not legal, but ethical. This is not a model. Not a solution. Not a prescription. It’s an invitation to notice patterns. To ask better questions. To practice restraint. The act of writing it is harder than expected. Every sentence feels like it could be over-read. Under-read. Misread. We resist the urge to clarify preemptively. Over-clarification is control wearing empathy’s clothes. When it’s released, the response is immediate.

We had been working together long enough that we were starting to think about the same problems at the same time, which was either a sign of a good working partnership or a sign of something else, and I had stopped trying to decide which. "That sentence is still awkward," I said, pointing at the screen. "I know," he said. "I have rewritten it four times." "Try cutting the first clause entirely," I said. "Start from the second one." He tried it. He read it back. "Better," he said. "Much better," I said. He typed the change and saved it and leaned back in his chair. "The transition into the conclusion still feels abrupt to me," he said. "Like we are jumping from the analysis into the recommend

Writing styles differs from people to people just as the fingerprint of one man is always different from the fingerprint of another man. Presently, my room is silent. Still, instead of it giving me the air of confidence I need to write my daily account, it stares right back at me with a shady unrealistic darkness. "So, have I told you about a boy that I like and he really really likes me too. The problem is that he lives far away," Katy said to me this morning. Normally, I have already accepted that all humans in this world are selfish. Each, carrying their own selfish desires in their mind and not wanting anything to come against it but I can't go on like this, not with this obese thunder-s

The first sentence took ten minutes. The second took twenty. By midnight, Jessica had written three paragraphs and crossed out half of them. She stared at the application form in frustration. Apparently writing about yourself was far more difficult than writing about anything else. The kitchen table had disappeared beneath scraps of paper, coffee cups, and crumpled notes. Jessica rubbed her eyes. Then read the sentence again. And hated it. Immediately. "Terrible." She crossed it out. Started again. Still terrible.

Why? I am awkward. I talk way too much, and those are both qualities that don’t make for good TV. I’d either spill something that I shouldn’t, literally or figuratively, because my glass of water is so dangerously close to my leg that I can’t keep still for the life of me. Or I’ll say something that I’m not supposed to say, spilling the tea, so to speak. Cas’ PR guy had coached us to avoid certain topics, and my mind is empty as to what those topics were.

I had so much information bouncing around in my head it took me longer to even write a sentence, I had to decipher what was for which essay. Pulling out my computer I sat at my desk and pulled up the essay that would be due on Monday. I had written a total of 4 sentences, technically that could be considered a paragraph. Brooke stuck her head in my door telling me she was on her way out and asking one last time if I wanted to go. I refused but thanked her turning back to the blinking cursor in front of me. It was mocking me, it knew my struggle. Taking a sip of my Dr. Pepper I sighed, "ok Kennedy Claire, it's now or never, of course, I preferred never.

I wanted to make it clear—that I had no claim on Aiden’s words, no place in their world—but all I could do was stand there, tongue-tied and vulnerable. Instead, what slipped out was almost laughably tame: “I just wanted to tell you… how much I admire your work. Your designs are really amazing.” My stomach twisted in knots as the words left me. They sounded clumsy, awkwardly polite, a poor substitute for the honesty I longed to convey. I wanted to apologize before the words even registered, but the moment had passed.

“She talks like she’s in a movie.” “Or like she’s scared to breathe.” I focused on the edge of my notebook, tracing invisible patterns with my thumb as I tried to push back their voices in my head. But discomfort had a way of seeping in through cracks you didn’t know existed. The rest of the day crawled by. Every time I wrote something down, someone would whisper something under their breath. When I spoke, my accent, slight, controlled, carefully neutral became another source of amusement. “Say that again.”

I was at the apartment desk with my journal open and the pen moving in the unhurried way it moved when I was writing to understand something rather than to record it. I had been sitting with the question of what the past months had produced and I was trying to find language for it that was accurate and not convenient, because the convenient version was available and simpler and missed the essential thing, which was that what had changed was not the absence of difficulty but the relationship between the difficulty and the people carrying it.