Writing's a Dog's Life

While cleaning out my bookshelves I found Peter Mayle's two Provence books  (A Year in Provence, and Toujours Provence) and decided to reread them.  I found them as amusing as before but more importantly I found this remarkable statement*

 "There is the constant doubt that anyone will want to read what you're writing, panic at missing deadlines that  you have imposed on yourself, and the deflating realization that those deadlines couldn't matter less to the rest of the world."

And that is my thought on this beautiful fall day as I sit in my dark office trying to schedule the mess I have gotten myself into.  My usual evasion strategy is to start another project when I become stuck.  This has resulted in having several pieces within a few thousand words of completion and only two months left before my self-imposed deadlines: two new novels**, a novelette/novella, and a short story***

I can hear you scoff: "A thousand words is nothing" or "A day's work at most."  But to me these are very, very important thousand words that will reward the hours a reader will spend on the earlier parts.  This requires careful structure, inspired phrases, and the emotional appeal to the reader's sensitive nature that I constantly fear I cannot, will not, deliver.

Which is why I am going to weed the garden, shop, or play with the cats.  I am going to do this because I suddenly thought of another story I need to write and I need to drive that out of my mind because NaNoMoWri starts tomorrow.

*Remarkable only in that it didn't mean anything to me when I first read it.

**Well, they were new when I started

*** This one has a real deadline

#SFWApro