I’m such a dork. When I read this out loud I pronounce the ‘p‘. Must be some remnant from too many bad sci fi tv shows when I was a kid. Or something my sister and I used to say to each other.
It could just be an instance of stupid funny things that only I find funny.
P-syching.
Ha!
Anyway, my word count on current WIP- 2323, 10 pages.
High five!
For some reason as soon as I hit 2000 words, things became deadly serious. (Really serious- like life or death, man!)
As if up until that point I was just futzing around. Stringing random words together. Blithely. Without a care in the world. Just some small mental excursion because, you know, I had nothing better to occupy my time with.
and then…
Dadada dah!
Some of those lightbulbs which appear around my head turned on. You guys get that too, right. Poof! Light!
Hey, wait a minute, maybe I’m not just futzing around. Maybe this could be a….BOOK.
Like I’m pretending to myself that that wasn’t my (evil) plan all along.
I mean- Hello, I wrote an OUTLINE.
But some part of me, perhaps the major part of my brain, won’t fully commit until I’ve reached 2000 words, which is pretty piddly actually. Not much to base anything on at all.
But for some reason it convinces me that, yes, perhaps I am willing to commit the next six months to a year of my time to this idea. To this BOOK.
Do the rest of you fool yourselves into keeping going? Or are you stalwart worker bees from the start, plugging away? How do you know if it’s actually any good? It’s blind faith really, in’t it?
I mean outline shmoutline. Not many of us stick to it. Its just another instance of creating notes, collecting data, recording our observations, so that the brain regards what we’re doing as work with an endpoint and a goal.
Otherwise the lightbulb may go out and the brain decide it would much rather be watching LA Ink.
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9 thoughts on “Psyching myself out”
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I fool myself all the time. Or rather I fool the inner critic by doodling around, pretending to myself that I'm just practicing.
And you're correct. There comes a moment when I see that I really am writing, and after I edit, edit, edit, I can say POOF!
Blind faith? Yes. It's the best kind, actually.
I think you're right, Marisa. I think that if we over-thought the process, and admitted the amount of time, work and dedication necessary to follow-through we'd probably give up before even beginning.
Ignorance is bliss!
I'm with, Marisa. Blind faith is the best kind. To commit to writing 80,000+ words is insane, but we do it anyway!
Haha. Your post made me laugh and brightened my morning – something needed to the sun is hiding today.
I’m a bit like you. 1500 – 2000 words is my “point of no return” too. I’ve started a few and plugged away or a day or two got to 1200 words and then … fizz … I move on to something else.
Obviously I liked the idea and it tickled my fancy, but there wasn’t enough passion to keep me sticking with it.
Having said that though, when the passion is there then there’s no stopping me. My current wip is 67,000 words. Yay!
That’s awesome, Pen. Sounds like you’re nearing the finish line. Good luck with it.
Absolutely, Donna! We're like goldfish forgetting each time we make a circuit how long the whole thing takes not to mention the frustration, the anxiety, the hair-tearing….
Oh yes, I just keep going and eventually think, "it's a book, it might not get published, but it's still a book!"
I've just finished a paranormal novel, decided to wrap it up at just 85k words but will start editing mid-end April.
CJ xx
p.s. found you via Twitter xx
Congrats on finishing your book, CJ, and good luck with the revision. Glad you found me.
Mine are NEVER any good until the entire book's been written and revised. Trust me!
The key is to just keep writing until it's finished. Then you can look at it and decide what's stinky and what's worthy!
Have a great weekend!