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I should probably write this in my writing journal, I but I think I'd rather house it here for easier referencing someday.
There seems to come a time in every novel or story I write (often several times), where I lose confidence in the idea completely. I wonder why I'm wasting my time writing this, why I ever thought it was a good idea, or why I ever thought someone who wasn't being forced or pitied into reading it would ever want to read it. If I write 100 stories, I will lose confidence in about 98 of them. There are very, very rare exceptions where I'll get through the story without feeling that way, but it is very rare and usually confined to short stories I finish in a night or two.
This loss of confidence has happened with almost every long story I've ever written and 100% with every NaNoWriMo novel I've attempted. It is the thing that, after hitting my 50,000 word goal, stops me from putting the 30-40,000 more words it needs on it to reach the ending. It is what stops me during editing and leaves me thinking, "Why bother? No amount of editing is ever going to make this good."
And yet, I know deep down, that it isn't true. When these stories do get published (I speak here in the instance of fanfic), they're always well received. Even the ones I cringe over the most tend to be well liked and recced and read. Often the lines I hate the most are the ones quoted back as being especially impactful. I've had complete strangers who don't know me and have no reason to kiss my ass tell me how good some of these stories are. I know I can write well. I wouldn't dedicate all this time and effort into writing a story if I didn't think it was worth it.
And yet every year in November, I start feeling like every other story is better than mine. I rationalize it in horrible ways too, like, "Well, that may be a horribly written rip off of Twilight-meets-Zombieland . . . but that's what society wants right now, so clearly it has more chance of ever getting published than Gay Pirates In Space" or whatever it is I'm writing at the time. I start thinking about other stories that will be BETTER than the one I'm working on now. (But which will ultimately seem like crap when I start on them, of course.) I start resenting what I'm writing. I start talking myself out of everything. I really, really hate it.
I hit that spot pretty early on in my novel this year. I'm usually pretty stoked for the first 10,000 words and it's the next 20,000 that make me resent and hate. This year it was from the first word I laid on the page and that resentment probably lasted the first 30-40,000. I'm currently just over 58,000 and I estimate I have another 25-30,000 more to write. But I've discovered that now that the characters are all introduced, they've all made their mistakes and gone on their journeys and have started to develop and recognize their problems and fix them, I'm not hating it as much anymore. They're no longer strangers, but starting to turn into friends. I'm over the "hill" in the novel so to speak, and now I can stop "pushing the boulder" and just sit back and let it roll. It isn't easy, but I'm starting to get excited. I'm starting to see the pieces fall into place, the connections I predicted have begun happening, the infatuation has organically started to turn into real love, the politics and plot points have begun to connect into logic. In short, I'm starting to hate it all a bit less.
The knowledge of the amount of editing and reediting it will need is daunting, but it's getting better.
I'm going to try to adhere to writing the same model I do with happiness: that one must think happy to be happy; that holding onto and dwelling over negativity will only perpetuate that in your life. I don't always manage that, but I do have a lot less negativity in my life than a lot of my friends, and what negativity I do tend to have often is channeled into meaningless chasms, such as hating a TV character instead of my parents or the kid that bagged my groceries wrong, etc.
Anyway, what I'm saying is I know I'm a good writer. I know that under all the self-doubt and typos and grammar and poorly phrased words, this is a good story. I know that with enough editing, these will be good characters. I know it, and damn it, I am going to prove it. I don't want to be arrogant about it, but I need to be a lot less self-doubting and pitying. No one telling me the story doesn't suck is going to help unless I genuinely believe it doesn't suck. I have to know it doesn't suck. And to prove to other people that it doesn't suck, I will want to edit it and refine it and make it as good as I possibly can.
Even if then it doesn't become popular or believed, I can know that it doesn't suck deep down; it might not appeal to anyone else, but I'll have the confidence that I made it amazing to me. And I believe with that confidence, other people will like it too. After all, I have a good track record with fanfics in fandom and the types of stories I write are geared for those exact same audiences.
Anyway.
This is sort of a pep talk to myself. It's funny that it comes AFTER I'm out of my "THIS SUCKS" stage, but I'm sure I'll get into that stage again, and it'll be nice to have this memoried so I can easily refer back to it.
You're brilliant, Van. Now go prove it to the rest of the world. :)
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