There's a version of your novel that would be easier to write. It has a simpler structure, a plot that doesn't ask too much of you, characters who don't force you to sit with uncomfortable truths about people — maybe even about yourself. That version exists, and you could write it, and it might even sell.
But you know, somewhere underneath the part of you that wants this to be easy, that it's not the book you're actually supposed to write.
The hard path in writing usually announces itself as resistance. It's the plot thread you keep avoiding because it means researching something unfamiliar. It's the character whose perspective makes you uncomfortable to inhabit. It's the ending that feels more true but less tidy than the one you originally planned. Every time you choose the easier road around these things, the book gets a little safer — and a little less alive.
This isn't a call to make writing miserable on purpose. Struggle for its own sake isn't virtue. But there's a difference between avoidable difficulty and necessary difficulty, and most working writers will tell you the second kind is where the real book lives. The scenes you're most afraid to write are often the ones readers remember.
So when you hit a fork — the comfortable draft or the true one — take a breath before you choose the easy one out of habit. The right path costs more. It also tends to be the only one that leads somewhere worth arriving.
Wrestling with the harder draft? The community is a good place to talk it through.
