{"id":2086,"date":"2026-04-08T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/?p=2086"},"modified":"2026-04-07T16:56:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T16:56:50","slug":"are-you-stuck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/?p=2086","title":{"rendered":"Are you stuck?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Dear Friends &amp; Readers,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the past two weeks, I\u2019ve been deep inside someone else\u2019s novel, a big, unwieldy, beautiful manuscript, full of talent, full of life\u2026 and completely tangled. The writer had lost her way in it and was losing her belief, not only in the novel, but in herself as a creator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I analyzed the manuscript, pulled it apart, and found the spine. I not only showed her how to rebuild the structure seamlessly to make it more readable and saleable, but also discovered a second novel buried inside that was crying out to be written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I told her to have faith, that she is extremely talented (she is!) and just needed to learn restraint, she started to cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ve given me hope,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I assured her that writing a novel is very hard, and that I would not under any circumstances, encourage her if I didn\u2019t believe what I was saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s something I know intimately: most writers don\u2019t fail because they lack ability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They falter because they cannot see their work clearly and become too discouraged to keep going. After many false starts and messy manuscripts, I stayed in the game, and I\u2019m thrilled that I\u2019ve given other writers the courage and hope to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!mUtb!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8d26766-48e8-4215-8acb-5a8ab490472a_1536x1024.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As we head into summer when my keynote presentations will slow down, I\u2019m opening a small number of spaces for editorial and consulting work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re sitting on a manuscript that isn\u2019t quite working, or lost confidence in something you once loved, get in touch by replying to this email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As ever,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Karen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Friends &amp; Readers, For the past two weeks, I\u2019ve been deep inside someone else\u2019s novel, a big, unwieldy, beautiful manuscript, full of talent, full of life\u2026 and completely tangled. The writer had lost her way in it and was losing her belief, not only in the novel, but in herself as a creator. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2086"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2088,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions\/2088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karenessex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}