scaredI need to take a few steps back and calm myself. I'm not going to get anywhere if I keep working myself up into a tizzy like this. Come on, Penna. Remember, this is suppose to be fun. I'm writing a story that I would want to read, and expressing myself through my characters.
UGGG, I JUST WANNA BE PUBLISHED SO BAD!! I've been working for this goal my whole life! Since the moment I was in 3rd grade and a teacher put our stories and illustrations together in cardboard bindings and we got to wrap them in the fabric we chose to make it look like a published book.
Still, I read Ranger's Apprentice, Temeraire, and Percy Jackson and I think "god, these books are so terribly clever... who am I to try to join them?" If I were in the same room with one of these writers that I read I would just be a stuttering, stammering mess. Do I belong in the same room with Rick Riordan or Naomi Novik?
*sigh* I still find it an honor that I got to exchange a few emails with Patricia Wrede when I was young.
*blushes* And god... I so want to have some child read my story and tell me how much they enjoyed it. To have it give some measure of happiness to their lives. I want this more than even being published. It all comes to nothing if I can't manage this. God, to have a child write to me and tell me how much they loved a character, that they probably got in trouble reading the book in class beneath their desk.
Gaaah!! See, see I'm in such a tizzy right now and I can't write. I've changed the story several times because I keep thinking "this isn't good enough." Uggg :( I am good enough, right?
I get so caught up in all my worry that tears start to come out and I just want to bury my head under my bed covers and never come out. Calm down, Penna. Calm down. First we have to focus on finishing the story. Take a deep breathe and remember how the story goes. You crafted it a certain way from the beginning because that's how the story unfolded inside of you. Stop changing it. You're just retracing steps you've already taken in the past and discarded already. Just let your characters do all the work. You know these guys so well. They are so familiar to you. Just give me the situation and they respond. This is why you created the story in this way. Anything else and you are going back to old problems where you couldn't get them to cooperate.
How many blog entries did you write on these old problems. See? You've been down this road. Why are you going down it again? This part is so easy, Penna. You are just re-writing to clean the story up, not re-writing the whole story itself. The events shouldn't change, just the writing. The only things you are changing are things that you wrote you need to change because of plotholes. Just insert the patches.
Your story is going to be great. Just calm down and write it. Remember: Writers Write! If you aren't writing, you're not a writer. Calm down, I can do this.
