Why Writing a Novel Feels So Hard (and How to Embrace the Struggle): A Conversation with Author Charlene Wang
This week on The Write It Scared Podcast, I’m sharing a conversation that stuck with me long after the mics were off. I spoke with debut author Charlene Wang, whose dark academia novel I’ll Follow You is a gripping exploration of toxic friendship, ambition, and the seductive power of social media.
What stood out most for me was Charlene’s honesty about how hard it was to write this book—and how normal that struggle actually is.
We talked about everything from long-ass revision timelines and perfectionism to how hard it can really be to embrace the title of writer.
This one’s for all of us in the thick of a messy draft, wondering if it’s supposed to feel this hard.
Spoiler: Sometimes it just is. And that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
From Litigator to Novelist
Charlene didn’t grow up thinking she’d become a novelist. In fact, for nearly a decade, she didn’t read fiction at all.
After graduating from Dartmouth and law school, she worked as a litigator in New York City. It wasn’t until after an intense murder trial that she felt the pull to write something fictional to process what she’d been through.
That attempt at a lightly fictionalized novel didn’t quite work. But it cracked something open.
Writing became a way to explore emotion, power, identity—themes that would eventually anchor I’ll Follow You.
Her first real breakthrough came from a year-long novel-writing program, when a new vision of what would become I’ll Follow You really took hold. A literary agent discovered her work through a reading event at the end of that program, and Charlene took the leap—leaving her job and fully committing to writing and revising the book.
A Book That Refused to Be Rushed
The book began with those litigation seeds and, over time, became something else entirely, yet the heart of the story remained.
The Writing Was Hard (And That’s Normal)
Charlene shared something I think every writer needs to hear. I know I do.
“I had more bad writing days than good.”
There’s a myth that good writing flows easily. That if it’s hard, it must not be working. But the truth is, sometimes the best writing happens when you’re pushing through the discomfort. Charlene talked about the importance of trusting your gut—even when self-doubt screams louder than the words on the page.
When she got stuck and frustrated, she stepped away, changed her environment, or wrote by hand. She let herself think instead of write. She reminded herself that first drafts don’t need to be good. They just need to exist.
She didn’t quit.
That mindset—combined with persistence—carried her through.
When the Journey Isn’t Straightforward, Nor is the Book
From start to publication, I’ll Follow You was a six-plus-year journey.
Interestingly, it started out as a completely different book. What began as a fictionalized legal drama eventually became a psychological suspense novel about two girls navigating friendship and betrayal.
She wrote failed drafts.
She changed the main characters and the entire plot of the book.
She even booked a trip to Florence to research art conservation—just to better understand her protagonist’s world.
She revised with her agent for two years before ever going out on submission.
In an effort to break out of her own legal writing habits (facts over fiction), Charlene wrote characters who were the opposite of her. And yet, by the end of the process, she returned to the same core themes from her first iteration: power, class, gender, and visibility.
This is something I see often: our stories know more than we do when we begin.
But if we stay in the process long enough, they reveal what they were really about all along.
Advice Worth Repeating
When I asked Charlene what advice she’d give other writers, her answer was simple and powerful:
Believe in yourself. Trust yourself. And keep believing.
Writing talent, she said, isn’t the most important thing. Persistence is.
She also offered this gem (borrowed from a tennis coach in Andre Agassi’s memoir):
You don’t have to hit a winner with every ball.
In other words, not every sentence needs to be perfect. Especially not in a first draft. Keep going. Clean it up later.
Final Thoughts
Charlene’s path to writing and publication is a reminder that writing a novel isn’t a straight line.
Nope. Not at all.
It’s more like a spiral: you circle closer and closer to the truth each time you come back to the page.
So if you’re in the middle of a messy draft or revision, if you’ve been second-guessing your ability or wondering why it’s so hard—please know this is simply part of the process. And you’re not alone in it.
Writing is hard. But it’s also magic.
And every time we sit down to do it, we prove to ourselves that we’re capable of a little more than we thought.
Charlene’s debut novel, I’ll Follow You, is out now.
You can learn more and connect with her at charlenewangauthor.com or on Instagram @charleneshiyi.
