I got some much-needed Feedback on my script. Now I want to hide under my desk and cry

It drove me crazy to stare at the bare page of my notebook while listening to my kids play at the park in front of our apartment. I stopped writing first drafts on my computer a year ago to make the process a little faster since changing my mind seemed more permanent when I couldn’t simply highlight and press backspace. Sitting under my favorite tree and periodically looking up at my kids, it was all familiar. I was supposed to scribble the words to the soft white pages of my Moleskin journal with the ease I’d always had in this place.

The trees were a soundtrack to my scribing.

It took my son coming over to ask me the simplest question to get back on track. Children do this all the time. A friend told me, “Kids are more profound on accident than most of us are on purpose.” His question to me was simple.

“Dad, what are you doing?”

What was I doing? I hadn’t been writing.

His innocent face looking down at me was all I needed. I hugged him before setting my notebook down and went to play with him and his siblings.

That night, I began typing out my first true draft of the story, but I was missing a few key elements that would have made the struggle my MC faced actually make sense. But I’d get to them, I thought. I finished another draft before heading to bed, but not before submitting it to my writers’ group to see what others thought and hear my words acted out in a way that made them more real.

I loved my antagonist. I still didn’t know who my protagonist was.

Kendra, one of the contributors, gave me some of the best advice for this piece, which I don’t think I could have come to so soon in writing this. The story is almost complete, but I want to cry.