SquarePeg Books

I’ve finished the rough draft of Fantasy Book 3 volume 1. This is going to turn into a three to four volume book, which is irritating to me, but necessary, I think. There’s so much that has to happen before I can jump into Book 4. How I’ve set up the storytelling in this world requires an unfortunate, but lengthy middle.

It’s a bit of a relief that I’ve gotten there, finally. It took three years for me to crank out the rough draft of the first third of this installment. The rough draft. Not the acceptable draft, not the one that I’ve gone over for logical mistakes and subtle tweaking to make the story flow smoothly. The rough draft.

My husband points to stress for why I don’t seem to be able to crank out a complete manuscript in a year.  Of course, everyone talks about how I’ve done this or that, how I’ve dealt with this problem or that issue. Real life has demands that must be met.

But it still feels as though I am lacking. Measuring oneself against the “Professional” yardstick is difficult, even at the best of times. Seeing all the ways you come up short can be devastating.

Taking so long to get through this particular book makes me question what skills I think I have. Switching to another genre at this point while sounding like a possible good idea, like a palate cleanser of some kind to brush out the cobwebs and look at things from a fresh viewpoint I worry would be disastrous. I feel like I’ve struggled so hard just to find the many strings and the best way to weave them together to make a vibrant tapestry of story, that I worry that putting them down, even in a “safe place” will mean I’ll never find it again.

I don’t know if you have this problem, but I know when I put something up in “a safe place where I won’t forget it,” I always forget where it is.

Right now I feel very uncertain about writing, generally. I still like it, I still want to do it, but I’m… I dunno. I’m not quite fired up on it. Once again, the reasons for “why” abound, but don’t really prove useful. You can only look at the same thing under the same microscope for so long before you can’t find anything new to examine and take apart.

I hope it’s just a phase.