Fear Itself

Okay, I complete admit to being a flighty sort of writer. I have this sort of mental block that happens whenever I go to start something new. If it’s a new story, for example – even if the ideas are just bursting away and begging to be put down, there are times when I’ll go to write it down and I’ll just be left staring at the blank page.

Maybe it’s that I’m afraid to commit. Or maybe it’s because once the words are on paper, they’re out there. The ideas aren’t nicely tucked away, safe from ridicule or judgement.

And so it will take me a few days of staring at the page until I really don’t have much choice. Once I take the plunge and get those first sentences down, it’s all good. I’ve mentally given myself permission to move forward and make mistakes. To write badly, as it were, with the knowledge that I’ll make it better later.

With revisions, its’s a little different. I’m fixing things, in theory, but it becomes a fine line between making something better…and overdoing it. (I ran into that with BoD – that first chapter was so overpolished at one point that it sounded like 15 different voices all trying to make themselves heard…which can happen when you try to please too many people.)

So then I have to decide – am I going to fix the little things first? Or the big things? At the moment, I’m working with the little things – a sentence here or there, a modification of a scene or two, the planting of some ideas that might not bear fruit until the third book.  The bigger changes loom over me and I know I need to get them done too, but I think I need to get my foundation stronger first – that way I won’t be feeling quite so out of control when I got to gut the brood mother of crap, so to speak. (That might be a little harsh, but there it is.)

Now there are also some thing behind the scenes that are distracting me utterly. (Not gaming, I swear it.) >_< But it’s hard not to be excited about some of it and that threatens to override the spot in my brain that says, “Gee, maybe you should EDIT or something.”

That siren song of potential is nice, but you can’t bank on what might be…only on what is.