“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.” Confucius.

So, I put myself on a blogging hiatus simply because I wanted to focus on finishing this draft of WIP2. At this point, I’m still far from The End, but I’m getting ever nearer.

I probably would have been closer to the finish (in fact, I was hoping this would have been a “Yes, I wrote The End!” blog post, but whatever), had I not burnt out sometime between last Monday and this past Tuesday. Sure, being mentally exhausted from the paythebills job didn’t really help me. (I needed to be a little more extrovert-y these past two weeks in my paythebills job, which already strains the limit of my introverted nature.) But, I honestly think I simply got hit with another stupid “fear of some kind of failure” panic attack.

I started to think too much about the story I’ve written so far; obsess too much about the work I’ll have to do to revise it; cringe about all the horrible writing that I’m going to be subjecting my poor crit partners to. So, that mindset just made me shut down and not have anything to write about whenever I sat down to write anything. I even started to entertain the thoughts of working on one of my many other WIP ideas rather than finishing WIP2.

But then…I decided to just plow through the actual storyline, even if that meant writing huge swaths of nothing but chapter summaries. At the very least, I was hoping to see images of scenes again, something, anything, to remind me why I loved this story. I plodded along and added a few pages here and there, but nothing amazing, and surely nothing I’d be proud to put my name on.

Sometime around 3AM this morning, I read a little blog post that Merrilee Faber shared. It’s from Janice Hardy’s blog: The Other Side of the Story. The blog talks about revisions, mainly, but what I liked most about the post were passages like this…

I knew when I wrote this draft that it was a bit “all over the place” because it was wrapping up the trilogy and I wasn’t sure how some things were going to pan out. I needed to write it and see what happened, and then needed to hear what folks said about it before I went back and revised.

…and this…

I cut 10K words (four entire chapters) without batting an eye because I didn’t need them anymore. They did their job to get me mentally where I needed to be, but they hurt the story to leave them in.

I know it’s a little thing, but finding someone who had to write in weird, meandering ways just to get to the place where they mentally needed to be to get through the story was encouraging to me. (Also, that she sent it out like that to gain feedback from her critters before revising it herself.) It immediately made me want to open my WIP2 and add a few more words. (At that point it was nearly 5AM, so I didn’t add too many pages, but I added a few, and that was all that mattered to me.)

I wish I could say that I did indeed find those tricksy muses and voila, I’m hot on their heels racing toward The End. I clearly didn’t, and I’m still plodding. But, I’m here and writing out all the stuff that’s lodged in my mind, and not paying attention to that little internal editor that’s telling me that whatever I’m writing is wrong/useless/unnecessary/doesn’t align with the MC’s characterization or voice.

I’m writing, and as rambly and pointless as those words are, they are getting me closer to The End (much closer than I would be if I waited for perfection.)

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway’s contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs.

This Week’s Topic:

What SNI were you psyched to work on, but discovered it was too close to something already done?

Wouldn’t you know it, but I felt like this just last week!

Since I’m relatively new to novel writing, and in fact, have only recently gotten used to the label, “Novelist,” I’m still so very easily discouraged when I hear novels being sold, or debuted, that are even remotely like my works in progress. Like, even if other works are in the same genre! I convince myself that I’m a hack and I should just stop writing because clearly all the good ideas are taken!

Of course I know, mentally, that this is a stupid thing to think. I swear I know. I know that there are tons of books with the same concept but are executed uniquely. I KNOW THIS. But, like I’ve stated here before, my rational brain-voice is sometimes overpowered by my omgI’matalentlesshack-voice.

Case in point:

On Friday, I happened upon a review of Cinder (which dude, sounds like an intriguing story!). I was beyond discouraged, especially because my WIP2 is a YA scifi that explores issues of humanity in a human/android, post-apocalyptic world. Talk about getting a case of the wonk-wonks. I was completely unmotivated to work on WIP2 that day, and I’d been SO HAPPY about my progress just the day before. Of course, my dear crit partners and friends talked me out of my pit of despair, convincing me that my WIP2 was a completely different story.

Anyway…

I’ve learned that ideas are just that: ideas. They’re not The Story. So, even if a story has a very similar idea to mine (or yours!), I know that The Story is all about the execution of that idea. While writing, my main ideas for both my WIPs changed and morphed so often, they’re now a few bits removed from the original spark of idea that gave birth to them.

So please, continue on with the idea, maybe claw your way out of whatever pit of despair you decided to wallow in momentarily, and just keep writing, my friend. Just. Keep. Writing. You never know where that original idea will take you!

Oh, and what I do to avoid the wonk-wonks, I’ve simply decided that when I’m working on something, I need to completely work with the door closed (thanks, Stephen King), and avoid reading book reviews or “just sold” announcements until I’m done with whatever WIP I’m working on. There’s something to be said about researching the market, etc, but for me, that can’t happen while I’m in my rough draft stages. I also wait to read other books that may be similarly themed as mine, which is why I’ve been waiting until I finished WIP2 to read the books I list HERE.

Is my method crazy? Yes. But, does it help me become a finisher of novels? Yes. And, in the end, that’s all that matters!

So, what idea were you psyched to work on, but discovered it was too close to something already done?

{Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered.

This week’s question: What was the best book you read in January?}

First of all, I can’t believe that January is gone, let alone have a “best of” for it. I’ve been so tunnel-vision-y with My Plan to finish this draft of WIP2 (which is still not done, ahem) on top of the everyday fires I had to put out responsibilities that I had to take care of for the paythebills job (main reason why WIP2’s current draft isn’t done yet), that even though I wanted to read so. Many. Awesome. Books. I just couldn’t.* I had to do the Grown Up Thing and Prioritize. *pout*

So, despite acquiring a bunch of books, most of which were sponsored by my friends and family via birthday presents (THANK YOU ALL!), I only really read three books: Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake; Pandemonium, by Lauren Oliver; and The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. (If you KNEW how quickly I devoured books you would be shocked, SHOCKED by this paltry number!)

I know this is a cop-out answer, but considering I prioritized my life to read these books, I would say ALL THREE were truly awesome. Plus, since they were distinctively different genres/styles, they all fed different Book Cravings that I’d been jonesing for.

If I must, MUST choose one, I would HAVE to choose The Fault in Our Stars, since that book is so life-changing AMAZING. (The fact that I’m choosing to spend my meager pennies to buy another copy to giveaway would ALSO be a great indicator to how much I loved it, I would imagine!)

I will eventually come to the point where I can read more science fiction and fantasy, the genre of my heart, but I am waiting till this draft is winging its way to my crit partners before I indulge. (See how Grown Up I am? See??)

So, what was the best book YOU read in January?

[*Waiting in the wings for me to finish WIP2 are Under the Never Sky, by Veronica Rossi, Legend, by Marie Lu, 77^th Shadow Street by Dean Koontz, Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I. So. Can’t. Wait!]