Was anxious to start my day, today, even though I had a good writing session. Part of it is that I’m just riding the wave of change at the moment. Things are in motion, disrupting my routine, and they’re GOOD things, not things I need to correct or stop or otherwise resist…so I just need to roll with it, and try to deal with the disruption the best that I can. And I wasn’t dealing with that disruption so well for the first half or so of my day.
Part of it, too, however, is absolutely how much resistance my unconscious is putting up over this new book I’m writing. It really wears me out, drives me away from the page, and otherwise makes me feel like shit. And I know why: it’s because what I’m working on is good. Because it will work. It will get my writing a big step towards the place I want it to be. And that…terrifies the part of me that wants everything to stay the same, to be safe, and to not be open to criticism and failure.
Failure is such a hard thing to reconcile. It feels SO BAD when it happens, but goddammit if it isn’t the moments when I learn the most. I can think of an instance with this very project where I made a story choice that wasn’t right, and when it was pointed out to me, oh holy fuck how it made me feel like a worthless idiot…and then what happened after that was that I fixed the problem, and then I knew it was a mistake so I wouldn’t make it again. I had no idea before. Now I know. That’s…magic, right there. That’s using feedback to take giant leaps forward in my craft. But…it also feels awful.
So…
Here’s to failure, I guess. And riding the wave.
Night.