Just Another Struggling Writer

Hello friends and welcome to another weighty week of writing.

Friends, last week I did not get a whole lot of writing done. You may have even noticed that the blog was quieter than usual. A brief but disruptive mental health hiccup nears the brunt of the blame, though the argument could be made that the amount of energy I’ve been putting into the podcast is at least partially responsible as well.

Whatever the cause, I am feeling fairly bummed by my lack of tangible progress on my current WIP. It’s been about two weeks now since I had forward movement in the manuscript and it has become really discouraging to even open my notebook lately. I thought maybe taking a short break from it would help clear the cobwebs, but unfortunately my pervasive anxiety brain simply will not let me take any manner of break. All I’ve been doing since encountering this particularly stubborn bout of writer’s block is stress about this stupid WIP, even when I’m doing other fun writerly things. Every creative endeavor I undertake, be it a blog or a podcast script, or even just reading, serves as a reminder that I could be writing if I weren’t such a failure.

Compounding that guilt is the New Idea I got last week. Though it is in its infancy and will need at least a few months of percolating before I am even remotely ready to start even outlining, the surge of dopamine I get whenever I come up with a new detail for the project has almost been enough to convince me to just dive right in. Almost.

Because setting aside the project that is frustrating me in favor of the shiny new idea isn’t actually going to solve anything. I do not want to be that writer that starts half a dozen projects and never finishes a single one.

Let me say that again just to make sure my anxiety heard me: I DO NOT WANT TO BE THAT WRITER WHO STARTS PROJECTS THEY NEVER FINISH.

And yet the excuses keep piling up.

I’m too stressed, if I don’t take a real break I’ll never finish anyway.

I didn’t outline this project and now I’m paying for it!

Starting this WIP was also an impulse decision! You have other, more prepared projects you could / should be working on.

My knee-jerk response to each of these sums up to, okay but I started it so I need to finish it. However, I have gotten to the point if I don’t even know if that’s actually the right approach or not.

What I do know is that nothing about the last two weeks have brought me any closer to my ultimate goal of being a prolific writer with dozens of books to my name. So, I hope for that goal’s sake, I figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do soon.

Kerry Share

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