Better

I owe you all a great amount of thanks, especially you, Jenny, for the encouragement and sympathy you gave under my last post. I really think I would still be wallowing in self doubt if not for your comments. As I mentioned before, thank you especially Jenny! I never fail to be inspired by your blog, but to have you write such an encouraging comment for me was amazing.
 Several of you said you also were going through the exact same faze. Maybe Jenny's words will help you out, too.

"When you are a writer, when you are an author, there is always someone above you. If you are a good writer, you're always looking up at that other someone, always straining to achieve that next level...and that sort of straining leaves the heart wide open to despair. There is always someone else above you, no matter how high you climb.

It strikes as depressing.

I know that feeling. I've just gone a long time without writing anything I considered "important" because I've been so busy getting the second draft of Adamantine edited. I was cross, I was grumpy, I was moody, I was at a loose end. My husband told me just to write - just write. I am always happier when I am writing something. And that's true. But it had been so long since I had written anything that a kind of metal plaque had built up that I had to break through. And it's hard. I'm lazy. Unless I'm really fired up, I don't do well. Sometimes I have to slog through the depression so I can slog through the laziness, so I can finally reach the keyboard and start writing. 

But I do it because, despite all the laziness and plotlessness and childishness that I fight, I love it. I'm learning to ignore the childishness, the thought of "How will anything I write ever be good?" So maybe what is spilling off my fingers is silly; I'll edit it later. In the meantime, I'm enjoying myself. I'm creating something. The touch-up work can come later. Maybe I'll hate it when I'm all done, but maybe I won't. It's worth a shot. I'm creating something.

Try writing those ideas that are under lock and key. Write them, and fix it, and tweak it again, and add a touch of salt. Gwyn, believe me, it is so, so hard to say what you really mean the first time, the second time, sometimes even the third time through. But that story in your head matters, and you never know but it might matter to others too. And one of these passes as you're trying to get it out the way you really mean it, you'll find that you have - and that is a beautiful feeling.

You're not bonkers. I think every honest author will own up to this slough of despond. But there is always Hope to lend a hand to pull you out, if you mean to press on, and I trust I have been a little bit of that for you. You're not bonkers. I'm right there with you."

Thanks to this and all your marvelous and wonderful words of advice Bristé part III is nearing completion and should be published by Sunday afternoon, snippets of the Artist's Daughter is also getting prepped for publishing on Various Novel Bits as well, and I'm trying to make sense of my pirate-esque short. So thankyouthankyouthankyou! I cannot find any other words to say it -- which is ironic :)

Dia,

Gwyn