self-imposed hiatus
Yesterday, I practically beat myself over the head to stop trying to write and stop editing. While I do realize that there are situations when a writer must do everything to finish editing or start writing or whatever, this is *not* the situation. I am not under a deadline, I am not broke because I haven’t written anything, I am not going to be less broke if I don’t write anything right now.
The small break gave me an awesome little idea for a story, more of a setting than an idea, actually.
Then, I started panicking about that I don’t have a protagonist, the setting is fairly impossible from the viewpoint of physics (and it’s SF, not fantasy), and I don’t have a conflict (doh, I don’t have a protagonist even!), and I don’t have a proper ending and all that writing thing means juggling too many balls, keeping them in the air while singing a song I barely know.
So I’m going to take another day of rest to let that stuff trickle past, to remember the actual joy of writing, writing not because I know I can do this but because I don’t know, and won’t know anything about my story until I finish it.
After all, I’m writing because I enjoy it, the thrill, the challenge. And if the thrill and challenge are beaten down by fear and anticipation of horrible critiques I can’t deal with (they’re never as horrible as I imagine they will be, but that’s beside the point), it seems that I need to travel further back in the blessed land of self-absorbed amateur who couldn’t care less about the “quality” of the writing, as long as it is enjoyable.
