January 20th, 2013


The fear of sucking is back

I haven't really worked on my novel in a few weeks. It feels like I haven't worked on it in years. I wrote a few sentences today, but I feel like that doesn't count. I WANT to work on it; I have that desire still, but it won't translate into actual writing. I don't think I have writer's block. I actually do have plenty of ideas, but there's this weird anxiety keeping me from writing. I just feel like it's going to suck, and I've battled this fear before but just because you've battled it before doesn't mean it won't come back.

The fear of sucking is definitely the most crippling thing a writer can face, in my opinion. I'm definitely done with giving myself deadlines--that just doesn't work for me. Sometimes I think deadlines make me work even more slowly. 

I don't know if I should force myself to write, or if I should just wait and let it come to me naturally.

I also recently started using Scrivener to organize my writing, and I realized that my climax comes around chapter 20, which just seems like it's way too late. I either have to shorten some of the earlier chapters, or move the climactic part closer to the middle part of the book. I have 70,000 words written before anything really major happens. That's crazy! I don't know if there's a rule for this but I feel like it shouldn't take you more than 50,000 words to get to the exciting stuff. I don't know. It just feels like I'm making the reader wait too long. 

I wish I could take that little pill that the guy in the movie Limitless takes and just finish my novel in less than a week.