Doubt Demons...

Day: 20
Time: 9:25
Expected Word Count: 33,340
Current Word Count: About the same as yesterday.

Today, I'm dealing with my own personal writing demon:  Doubt.  Everyone goes through it.  Intellectually, I know that I'm a good writer, but on days like this, when I feel so far behind where I want to be with my writing, I wonder if I am fooling myself.

Can you tell I'm tired?

I know that we all go through those moments.  Moments when we can't get past the blockage in our brains that whispers, "You don't know where this is going.  You'll never finish.  You're fooling yourself that you're really an author."

And then...well - I wallow for just a bit in my own hot tub of self-pity and doubt, then I remember that I have read some really terrible books in my time.  Books that made me wonder, "Who thought this was a good idea?" and books that made me warn others away from them because I could have predicted the ending from the very first chapter.  Books that made me hate the characters.  Books that made me want to fall asleep in self-defense.  Books that made me roll my eyes.  Books that made me want to do better.

So, yeah, I've read a lot of really EXCELLENT books in addition to the awful ones, and while I aspire to be like the authors of those books, that doesn't make my doubt demons go away.  What makes my doubt demons go away is all those books I've read that convinced me I could do better, and that I should put up or shut up.

So...back to putting up, with a little dose of shutting up - shutting up those demons, that is.

All Words Are Progress

~Mrs. W.