Doubts and the Long Night of the Soul

I had my first night, in a long time, where I was losing sleep over my writing.  It was an imperial long night of the soul.  I mean I was really agonizing over the quality of my work.  Partly that was because I was reviewing the harsh notes from a reviewer and came to the legit conclusion that the problem is that the reader is a monolingual asshole.  Partly I was tossing and turning was because I finally put something out into the universe.

You know what I decided?  Cliché as it may sound, at the end of the road, what really matters is the love of the craft, getting better at it, and just writing.  Writing and hitting those notes hard. Every. Day.  That's the only way I could get myself to quiet the screaming voices, get some rest.  (I also decided not to keep looking at my publication on Smashwords with a microscope and stop treating it like a lucha libre wrestler: I mean it's not even done being reviewed.  Learn and move on.)

Today is a new day, and I am happily threading out some resources on dialogue for my creative writing students.  I am also starting an informal creative writing group for current and former students.  The sole purpose is to review work, especially long projects.  We meet tomorrow, Friday, from 12p.m. to 2p.m., probably off-campus because I will have negotiations that morning and will be starving by then.  I don't think the negotiations will go past three hours.  Fingers crossed.  

So, the sun is out, and my writing energy is amped to the max.  My next project is up for revision, this weekend.  It's a horror short. I do have a writing goal of learning more about the two main characters in my novel, Ashley and Alan and two supporting characters Cherry and Strike.  (Cherry and Strike may start a romance of their own.  Hmmmm.)  I am going to draw them again and put them in different situations.  Maybe get them stuck in the elevator and have it stop as Lamott suggests.  Maybe they will have a lucha libre match of their own. 

Rise up from the writing pit, if you are in one.  It's a new day.  #Resist

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