Yesterday I was so happy I got to the 50K word threshold. I wanted to spend the day celebrating.
Being a mommy, it didn't exactly work out that way. My big kids went their way with their friends. My husband came home from work grumbly (he shares my recent insomnia so I get it). My toddler is in the midst of potty training (yay me) so I spent the afternoon obsessing over whether the little picture on his pull-up had disappeared.
At some point in the day, my joy faded. Self-doubt found its way in and took over.
My husband asked to read the chapters in an attempt to cheer me up. I had already marked edits on the pages. He read it and laughed out loud more than once. But I still didn't trust his reaction. He said he loved it. I couldn't help but feel like maybe he was just saying that to try to cheer me up.
We had Indian carry-out at home (my favorite). But it didn't seem like a celebration. The point of my joy had come and gone. My big kids weren't there and my babes had fallen asleep. I wasn't excited about it anymore. I was happy. I could see it was a milestone. But I wasn't ecstatically happy about it.
It's OK though. My character falls into a very dark depression in the next chapter. Maybe I can transform my current blah feeling into a really awesome chapter.
By the way, Kid in the Front Row once again wrote a very inspirational blog post today. He talks about success and what it means to writers and artists vs. normal people. He is right - success for me is creating that one moment that speaks to people, that touches them. I think I have done this in my novel. So today, I write some more.
That's why I write, too--in hopes that something I write will speak to someone and possibly make a difference, or give them a glimmer of hope, or something.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how sometimes reaching one accomplishment can be all YAY! and then 'oh, okay, that's done, what's next?' When I finished my last novel, I was just so RELIEVED because it was the hardest thing I had ever written. And now I have to rewrite parts of it. I have not been able to do that yet--too much else my brain's been trying to process. It can be easy sometimes to doubt and it sometimes seems that there's still so much to do...but you have been doing an AMAZING job, and working really hard, and I am amazed by how much you have been doing.