wirtery angsting

You know, I think I lost my nerve.

It's in every section, when I stop to take a rest and re-read to see if I slipped into writing in tongues, or perhaps present tense, by mistake. I just stop, and it takes a physical effort to make myself go another five words. Or another section, even.

This is the first time writing has ever scared me. I mean, not putting down the words in something resembling readable grammatical form, but actual doubt I can shape it into a story.



I'm having a bad week, granted. I mean, a *really* nasty week, and I took off work today because of that, but it's not just that. If anything, this gives me a perfect excuse to duck and immerse in other things that have absolutely no bearing on real life.

I did a word count on The Yard and managed 4000 words today that are supposed to lead to more words, which will lead to the end of the first part. I'm not having a pleasantly anticipatory feeling, even though I'm coming to one of the three scenes that I first imagined, that led me to wanting to write this in the first place. One of the first three scenes, my freaking Holy Grail of fic writing, in which I will sometimes say, screw everything in the middle, get me to the Scene I Want to Write. It's taken seventeen months to get here, most of that time contemplating that I needed to just delete the thing so I'd stop feeling bad about it when I opened my folder, and I'm a couple of thousand words away from one of my three favorite parts, and I'm just--not excited.

I'm kind of pathetically grateful I got this far, though, kind of like my grim contentment after running a mile back in high school. Which I suppose is something, but really isn't Thrilled Excitement, either. Mostly, I'm staring at it, setting mental goals for myself. I will do *this* part, which will set up *this* part, which will lead to *this* part, after which *this* can happen.

I'm sure the words are going together. I'm convinced that the timeline, such as it is, makes sense. I'm even somewhat okay with my reasons for why things happen. I mean, rivkat's beta on the first ninety something pages didn't start with "what is this thing you sent me, because it doesn't resemble anything like a story". And if she says it's readable, that's all there is to it.

What bothers me is, it's not even done, and I'm worried if it makes sense. And I've never cared before. I really haven't. I mean, once it's beta'ed and polished and released, sure, I can't eat for the first few hours after and lose the will to live for short periods of time when I realize that I really *should* have taken out that comma and misspelled there as their twice. You know, normal things. That's when I panic on whether or not it makes sense, or whether I should have done *more* here or *less* there or something else, and usually re-read to discover all the strange, silly mistakes that can only come about when you've overedited your own story to the point where everything looks like it's written in Greek no matter what you do.

Sometimes, I release and don't care at all, though that's pretty damn rare, and I can count the number of stories on one hand that I liked it so much myself that other people liking it was superfluous, even after posting. But I can count this story as the only one I'm already scared of. It's like the wrong kind of challenge, or like I'm doing it for all the wrong reasons, and that's partially true--I restarted it for reasons that had nothing to do with wanting to write it and a lot more to do with being just unbelievably angry--but by now, I *should* be in that place where nothing else matters but what I'm writing, and I got there for a little while the other night, but I'm back to grinding my teeth and *slogging* through every word, prying it out and setting it down and just relieved to see it moving. Saying I'm in a bad place right now doesn't cut it. I'm either doing this now because I want to, because I have to tell it, or I'm doing it for bad reasons and need to rethink it.

I'm keeping track on how far I've gotten. Useless statistics.

word count:

52,639 total
37,101 since I restarted last month (or was it June? Hmm.)

times i've broken the outline and rewrote it:
twelve

You know, if anyone deserves pity, it's svmadelyn. She's the one that gets accosted with this thing every time I start working on it again. Pity those who are on AIM and I feel the need to share. *sighs*

Maybe I need to try a new brand of coffee.