It’s not the drafting. It’s not even the rewriting. It’s the constant guessing. Guessing if the scene works. Guessing if the emotion landed. Guessing if the feedback you got was helpful… or quietly damaging. So you revise. Then revise again. Then delete chapters that once felt right. And somehow the book feels heavier, not clearer. Here’s what most writers don’t realize: When you’re deep inside a manuscript, you’re asking your brain to do too many jobs at once. You’re the writer. The editor. The critic. The reader. The problem-solver. That’s why revising drains more energy than drafting. That’s why “knowing what to fix next” feels harder than writing the scene itself. At a certain point, rewriting stops being progress and starts being a signal: The story doesn’t need more effort, it needs clarity. Clarity about: • what’s already working • what’s confusing the reader without you realizing it • what actually matters enough to fix now That moment doesn’t mean the book is broken. It means the book has outgrown isolation. If you’re a writer reading this: What’s costing you the most energy right now, rewriting, trusting feedback, or knowing what actually matters enough to fix first?