ManicDDaily

For me, what is hardest about Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) is not doing the writing; it’s believing in the writing.

That’s not exactly right.   What’s hard to believe is that the writing will add up to something that will go out into the world and be read.

Partly this relates to a certain lack of confidence in my own ability to finish a project to its utmost finished state.  Although frankly, I have a fair amount of confidence in this area–I’ve written a few novels which at one point or another I believed to be in their utmost finished state.  (The only reason I began unraveling these books was that they didn’t seem to appeal to publishers in that state.)

Which brings me to the source of my true lack of confidence–the increasing awareness of the difficulty in getting projects out so that they are accessible and noticeable in our jam-packed, self-promotional, world.

This end piece (the difficulty in actually doing something with a novel, once written) can make it very difficult to write the novel.  Of course, this gloominess is an excuse, but it’s a true hindrance.

What to do about it?

The answers are obvious but worth writing down:  put the dispiriting out of your mind.  Focus on the endeavor itself.   Find satisfaction in the process.  And, importantly, remember (always) the possibility of the unexpected;  think of the Soviet Union!  Who really predicted–at the time– that it would end the way it did?

I’m not sure my inner novelist is very much like Gorbachev (kind of hope not),  and I’m not sure it’s positive to be inspired by collapses!  But hey, you have to work with what you’ve got.  Keep doing it.