Eating the Elephant

My entries lately have been of the go-go-go-cheer-yay-write variety. I hope I'm not becoming repetitive. I don't plan many blogs; even the A to Z challenge is mostly off the cuff. So my entries naturally gravitate towards what I need/want to hear as a writer. And right now I need all the encouragement I can get. I feel like that person who's been hiking for 87 miles on a hundred-mile trail. Sore. Tired. Starting to wonder why I'm doing this in the first place. Good things too... grateful. Inspired. Proud of the work I've done so far. But it's close to being done, and I guess we all go through this in one form or another at different points in our individual writing processes.

Which brings me to the old adage: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I have to keep reminding myself of this metaphor lately. I want it to be DONE. I'm ready to get it into its proverbial bottom drawer and let it breathe. I love the universe and characters I've created, but my brain is yelling for a rest, and then something new. I'm committed to getting this finished, and I don't want to set it aside now - the story's hot, and I'm afraid if I stop now and come back in a few weeks I won't be able to finish. But working on the book plus all the rest of the stress in my life is really starting to wear me down.

It's times like this I remind myself of Lester Burnham's words in American Beauty:

"Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life."

Right?

I've gotten here one chapter at a time. One page at a time. One paragraph at a time. One sentence, one word, one letter at a time. It's not going to materialize on the page by itself. I need to make it happen. But it's going to happen in its own time. This elephant has been vanishing bite by bite. Now I've got a little bit left... it's daunting, but I'm determined to finish the whole damn thing.

What do you do to remind yourself of how far you've come? How do you sustain your enthusiasm for a long-term project? What kinds of things do you do for yourself to encourage completion of a long WIP?

Beating Self-Doubt

It took me a long time to decide to write a book.

I've been writing for most of my life (since I was four or so). Over the years, especially in my school career, I've written more short stories and poems than I can remember. I went to Governor's School in 1991 and 1993, and went to college on a writing scholarship (a fun but short-lived higher education experience; I left college a year and a half after I started). After college, I kept writing, but didn't get serious about it for several years. When I finally started writing again in the spring of 2000 - this time for an online writing contest at the ACW Club, I wasn't sure if I still had the knack for making things up and writing 'em down. I won the first contest I entered, and two more after that, so my confidence was bolstered and I kept writing stories here and there, never considering sending them out for serious consideration by writing markets.

Until I met my fellow writing compatriot and Reedy River Rat Gail Gray, I'd only gotten the courage to send one of my stories out for publication. I sent it to ten different markets and got rejected ten times. After that I gave up submitting for a while, until Gail convinced me I should try again. The self-doubt was overwhelming, but I finally did it... and to my surprise, the piece was accepted.

What a rush! The self-doubt got beaten back into a corner, squealing in pain (but still alive, oh yes, it's almost impossible to kill - like some kind of mental cockroach *shudders*). I started sending out more pieces, and found a few more homes for my stories. This bolstered my confidence even more, and I realized one day about a year after the first acceptance that I was writing all the time. Short stories and poems, mostly, but still good stuff. I was attending a regular writers' meeting and the quality of my work got better and better. "You should write a book," they told me. "It would be amazing!" Every time I'd bring a new short story to the table, Gail would tell me, "You could turn this into a novel." (Seems like I've been long-distance writing my whole life and didn't know it, heh.)

But still the self-doubt remained. I never finish anything long-term, the self-doubt said disparagingly. I'll just get so far into it and quit. Or that's just too long of a project, the self-doubt would whisper. Why work on something that'll take at least a year to finish and then never get published?

The prologue of the novel came to me one night in early August, and after composing it in a white-hot fever of creativity, I sat back and read over those first few pages, wondering to myself, can I keep this going? Can I actually write a book? Is there enough in this story to make it believable and entertaining? Is this something I...

"Oh, quit it already," I said to myself. "Just do it, for God's sake." For a wonder, the self-doubt shut its mouth and I kept on writing.

Since then, it's crept back over and over again, but I keep beating it back with the biggest stick I can find. I show it all the pages I've written, the encouraging notes from writers' meeting, the way the plot has developed and taken on a mind of its own. When self-doubt whispers that I'm not (flourish of trumpets, please) a REAL WRITER, I remind it to look my writing credits, my query letters for short pieces, and my blog and the people who follow me, because all those things prove that I am what I say I am. I show it my timeline for getting the novel completed and published, and I remind it that I'm using the Clark Kent job as a means to an end to get where I need to be.

I tell it, in no uncertain terms, to f&$k off.

And sometimes - MOST times, at least lately, while I'm riding the high of creating this crazy novel - it does.

What do you do to beat your own self-doubt? How do you remind yourself that you are exactly where you're supposed to be?