Here is the deal with trying to writing, it is a never-ending process. I had an outline of my story when I began: start here – go here – end here. I am almost to the end of my first draft, a very rough first draft and I am just over a month out with my 15 minutes with an agent to pitch it. Now I have to decide what I am going to do with it. Do I revise it, change the story completely while keeping the cast of characters, or do I “pitch it” to the side. This last idea is not something I want to do but I am not happy with the way the story has come out. The end has been a struggle to put together and find the right words to type.

I have been made to believe by some that my story doesn’t have enough conflict or will come off “lectury” because of the story I want to tell. I want to… NEED TO finish this story, this book. I haven’t finished anything in the past and I can’t keep quitting when it becomes a struggle to write my stories. Like my reading pile, I also have a pile of stories I want to write as they constantly come to mind, creating new files with documents with the basics of the story that comes up. In the last month, I have written down the basic ideas for eight different stories. They keep coming to my mind but I can’t let myself be distracted. It would be so easy to just change over to one of those other ideas without finishing this one. But then nothing gets done, does it?

I can blame these delays on writer’s block, but I am not really blocked just stuck. I want to write, I attempt to get something out each day but I have skipped a few in the past few weeks because of personal events. One day was to spend an entire day with my family; which we haven’t been able to do because of schedule conflicts and a lot of different big chores going on. Another was because my mind was elsewhere because of having to get a biopsy done on my back – which is probably nothing. And the last was because I sat there for two hours and couldn’t come up with a single thing to put down on paper. Making me wish that I had someone to “snap me out of it” at these moments.

Part of these doubts come from whether it will be good enough. Who wants to write something they put everything into then have it slammed by reviewers? I have spent my life reading amazing novels, watching incredible stories on the screen and I wonder at the end of the night how I could even attempt to put my work in the same category as these. It’s not that my writing sucks but it is the intimidation of the amazing things I have read because no matter what someone says… they want their book to be a success. You don’t write and publish something just for yourself. Stories are written and created to be enjoyed by others. Others who aren’t the creator. I want my stories to be read and enjoyed… not for fame but because that is why it exists in the first place. That is its job – to be read. Without being read it’s just words on a page, ignored and forgotten.

So, my story will one day be finished but not anytime soon. It’s still incubating in my head.

ETA: I just realized that on July 6 I had around 30K words. Today I broke 50K. Pretty dang good.