You've Come A Long Way Already

It's impossible to feel good about yourself ALL THE TIME. At least for me. If you have the secret, do share. But right now, I am going through my period of suck about my novel. As in, this sucks, everything about it sucks, it's so full of suck that I want to print it out, burn it, and erase it from my computer so no one can ever witness the full magnitude of suck. Like, even thinking about the MS makes me want to rip my hair out.

At times like these, I think it is important to remember how far you've already come. I mean, even if it's full of suck, I did produce over 200 pages of stuff. Sucky stuff is still stuff. Most people don't do that, right? Most people WANT to write a novel, and they'll do it when they have time for it.

Do you remember when you first started writing? Or what made you start writing?

Because I wrote a lot when I was young, and I even wrote through high school, but I had pretty much given up on the original stuff. I first started writing when I was eight or nine. For actual purposes, though, I consider the first time I started writing (again) to be three years ago. I remember because it was right after I read the Percy Jackson series, and I don't know, sometimes, you just have a Moment you can't explain. I guess my Moment happened to be after I read a middle grade fantasy series marketed toward preteen boys (incidentally, it was Percy's birthday on Saturday ^_^).

I decided to start writing original again. Three months later, I finished my first original novel. (I always had a problem with finishing before that.)

And here we are, three years later, and I've written a lot more than that, even. I have pages of STUFF. You just have to be grateful that at some point, you decided to stop thinking about being a novelist and worked on actually BEING a novelist.

I'm sure I repeat myself after a while. I have been blogging (on and off) for three years, after all. But yeah. Where were you three years ago? I bet you had a lot less stuff, sucky or not. I don't think anyone ever thinks, wow, I sure wish I didn't write that novel. Even if it never sees the light of day, you know? So here. Watch this, from NYT bestselling author Beth Revis. Ten unpubbed manuscripts in ten years! It's pretty incredible. Makes you feel good for trying. For writing, instead of just dreaming.