Does It Build Character?

Yesterday I was out of commission for a variety of reasons. Today I’m back on the horse while recovering–well, sort of. Sort of back on the horse, not sort of recovering. Recovery is going just fine.

Argh. I can already tell stringing words together is going to be fun today.

I’m at that stage with a new series–too far into the first book to back out, not far enough along that I can see that I have a chance at finishing it–where every single word I put down seems wrong. The world the characters inhabit is opening up, slowly but surely, and everything I wrote up until I felt the first click in the lock of the story seems dead wrong. It’s not, it will just need tweaking. The biggest danger now is going back and getting caught in the death spiral of reworking the beginning so many times one doesn’t finish the rest of the damn book. Which I frankly can’t afford.

I know the solution is just to push through, that this is a part of the process, that I go through this every time, that it will get better as I gain momentum. Unfortunately, all the calm soothing self-talk in the world will not make the feeling of panic any smaller. The only thing that will help is lowering my head and diving right through. Maybe I’m a freak, I don’t know. I just know that the process does not grow any easier. It grows more tolerable with experience, but not easier.

There might be a lesson in that. *sigh* Maybe it builds character or something. When I build enough character, maybe I won’t feel like tearing my hair out and weeping when I start a new series. Won’t that be nice.

Over and out.

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