1,500 words and some struggles

So now I’m caught up to the point in my story where I wanted to be by the end of break.  I sat down in the library and it just flowed out.  Good stuff.

However, I’m starting to have some doubts about this story…I don’t know…

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I suppose it’s natural as a writer to doubt your writing.  It’s probably natural in just about anything.  But, well, I don’t know.  I’m not getting depressed or worked up about it or anything, but it’s in the back of my head.

It comes from a couple of places.  First of all, I haven’t really done any outlining or planning of this novel, except what’s in my head, and it’s getting so long that I’m starting to forget what I’ve already written.  When that happens, you get confused about what’s supposed to happen next, and once you get lost it’s pretty easy to start having doubts.

The other place it comes from is the phrase “your first novel always sucks” that I’ve heard people say.  I think that it was originally meant to be liberating, but instead, for me it’s…well, it makes me doubt this story.  Specifically, it makes me want to get this one over with so that I can do another one.

But I don’t want to write something crappy on purpose just so I can move on to my second novel.  I want to write something that I can actually submit.  I will probably never feel that anything I write is good enough to be in print, but I can at least make it good enough that I can suck it up and send it out.  If I’m just writing a novel for the sake of moving on to the next one…what’s the point?  I have to shoot high for this first novel–but the only way I can be motivated to do that is if I feel that it’s possible for it to be good.  If I’ve got this belief “your first novel always sucks” ingrained in me…how can I even try?

Well, I’m going to.  I know that the idea is pretty cool, and I can tell myself that this is just the rough draft.  If I get too lost, I can spend an hour or two skimming over what I wrote before and then move on.  And if the characters are too flat, or just lame…I can plan on changing that in the rewrite and write them well from this point on.

I think I’m past the halfway mark in this novel.  If I do 1,500 words per day like I’m doing now, the rough draft will be done in time for me to do some major revising before going abroad.  After the study abroad (and perhaps even on it), I’ll be able to keep revising and making it better.  By January of next year I should have a submittable manuscript.  By that time I’ll already be working on a second novel, probably from ideas that come to me while I’m in the Middle East.  And from there, who knows?  If I work at it consistently, it will just keep getting better.

I’ll try my hardest to do this story idea justice–and not just for the sake of practice.  I will do it so that I’ll have something to submit, even if it isn’t as perfect as I’d like.  Just stop stressing and let the story come out.

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