I'm Over You, Writer's Block.
I’m nervous. It’s been a while since I’ve touched my novels. I’ve sort of avoided them; put them in the darkest corner of my computer screen and ignored their existence. To this date, I’ve been sending out queries since… maybe 2010? Maybe.
I wasn’t diligent and it wasn’t an everyday thing where I’d wake up, send out five in the morning, five at midday, and five at night. It was more of an on and off, oh I’m not working today maybe I can send out three.
Besides the point. I’m going to wipe the dust off that corner of my screen and give them a read—from the beginning.
For you writers, actually, even if you’re not a writer, have you every stumbled upon work you’ve written from maybe a year ago? Five years? Ten years? When you were in elementary school? An old journal you started writing in, in middle school because somebody told you it was therapeutic?
Or just talking shit in a diary because it comes with a lock and no one would ever see it, and it made you feel cool having the only voice activated password or key?
Then after reading it you thought to yourself “What was that? What in the world was I talking about? I sound so young! I can’t even get through this.” Well that’s how I feel every time I read my work. I’m afraid that I’ll reread my first novel and make so many changes that it’ll be far from what I intended the concept to be. It’s sort of happened already. I’ve deleted pages of work, changed the dialogue so many times because my voice was growing, even though the characters weren't.
This will probably be my twentieth read of the first book alone since 2009 but hey, what's one more read. I'm hoping that through this, I'll be inspired to continue writing my series again. My writer's block has had more than enough time to figure itself out.
Now I'm going to force myself to write after all is read and done. Maybe read a crappy series to bring the competitiveness out of me while chanting "If they were able to get published, I can too." Then I'll get the ol' pen and paper, go to the park where it all started.
