Like a brutally difficult video game, I keep putting Kill The King away, swearing I need some space from it, but then I pick it right back up again. 

At times I’ve been feeling — shall we say — less than excited for the project. Is it too big? Too intricate? Missing an X factor? Am I just not passionate about it? Am I in the middle-of-act-two slump? I’m more easily distracted and prone to procrastination than with any project before, and having a harder time SEEING and FEELING the action as I write it. 

Every time I pick it back up, I know what to do with it, though I’m never fully convinced that I’m doing the right thing. 

My inner prima-donna suggests that we shouldn’t do it if we don’t feel like it! “I need inspiration to move me!”

Then, my inner workhorse condemns that, saying we’ll never get books done if we don’t buckle down and use some discipline. “If it’s a bit awkward in the first draft, that’ll be fixed in later drafts!”

Finally, my inner pragmatist compares writing to a fart: “If you have to force it, it’s probably going to be shit.”

So what’s the solution? What do I do?

I’ve never really bounced from project to project, usually preferring to stick with one manuscript until I write “The End”, but I have just hit a very tidy milestone that would make it easy to put Kill The King down and work on something else for a little while. Another “The End” to put on my wall, another notch on the keyboard, to bolster the confidence and silence that sing-song goblin telling me “hehehe, you’re not good enough to write this book.”

“You suck!”

-Doubt Goblin

First off, goblin, fuck you. Second, the act of writing it makes me better. Writing a draft of a 100,000 word book takes quite a while and provides a lot of practise to get better, so by the time the second draft is done, I WILL be good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect, no one person can make a book ready for shelves, that takes a team and I want some more experience before I go seriously searching for an agent. 

Still, the doubt creeps.

Maybe I SHOULD take a break and work on one of the others.

But wouldn’t it be easier to come back to a completed first draft? Be more forgiving of myself in the meantime? 

This, above, ad nauseam. God damn it.

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