The Unification Chronicles

I got a pal­try 267 words yes­ter­day, bring­ing the total word­count for Cru­sade to 4032. Need­less to say, this is not what I had in mind. Par­tially, my per­for­mance yes­ter­day was fatigue. I was hella tired, and wasn’t moti­vated to do much of any­thing. I also didn’t get my daily dose of Chipo­tle, which I’ll dis­cuss in a sep­a­rate post.

But it wasn’t all fatigue. This morn­ing I lis­tened to the lat­est I Should Be Writ­ing pod­cast, and Mur absolutely nailed it. I’m over­think­ing things. I’m sec­ond guess­ing myself because I know that I’m going to be post­ing my rough draft, and I don’t want it to suck or even worse, be bor­ing. And I’m at the begin­ning of the book, so I’m doing a lot of lay­ing ground­work right now (although I have already had one bloody shootout). And if I feel like what I’m about to write is going to be bor­ing, I freeze, and don’t write any­thing at all.

This is hor­ri­ble, and I damn well know better.

The first com­mand­ment of writ­ing is Thou Shalt Suck. It’s okay. That’s what first drafts are for. I love a draft­ing and edit­ing like chil­dren, I can’t really pick between them. There is magic in each. But I do know that one of the things I like best about edit­ing is find­ing new and excit­ing ways to improve the stuff I wrote while draft­ing, play­ing with the craft of sto­ry­telling rather than the art. First drafts should be art, even bad art. They should be pure sto­ry­telling, just blue-​​sky daydreaming.

And the fact that I’m post­ing my first draft has got my stymied. I real­ize at this point only a dozen or so peo­ple stop by, and even they don’t read every­thing, so my rough drafts aren’t really being seen by the judg­men­tal hordes I imag­ine, but that’s rea­son. Fear, by def­i­n­i­tion, isn’t rea­son­able. So the big ques­tion is, how can I keep my promise to pro­vide the whole kit and kaboo­dle as an exam­ple to other new writ­ers, remain trans­par­ent about the entire process, and yet write the rough draft fearlessly?