Yeah, I should already be in bed, but I got caught up in buying some new music with my birthday iTunes gift cards.

Lately things have been really stressful between work and everything else I'm trying to do/keep up with. Haven't felt very creative and I feel scattered all over the place. It's like there's this little voice in my head telling me that whatever book project I'm working on, I should be working on something else because clearly "this," whatever "this" happens to be at that exact second, isn't going to be good enough for anything. I know this is just another form of self-doubt. Most writers (heck, most people) experience this in one way or another. But right now, it is just KILLING me. I love writing. It's my escape, my favorite thing to do even when it's difficult. And it feels like the peace I normally find in doing so is slowly being eaten away by my own stupid worries and fears.

I want to write the stories that speak to me. And yet, I know that to try to be a success as an author, you probably have to be a little more directed. Like not genre-hopping as I'm wont to do. Or, sub-genre hopping, as the case may be. Some kinds of stories may not be popular right now, but if you're desperate to write said story, go for it. But if you do that, you take the chance that what you've written, what you've spent XX months working on, will just hang out in a file on your desk for years or whatever. But I'm so sick of worrying about that, you know? When I started doing this, I thought about things like that, but I didn't let it bother me. Now it seems to haunt me all the time.

I have a project that I started last year or the year before (not a Zara or Rennie story) and I've been working on it pretty regularly for the last year or so...and I'm so bloody sick of it. I just don't want to do it anymore. It's in a way over-crowded subgenre, so selling isn't a likelihood and I'm not enjoying it, so what's the point, right?

I can't stand the idea of all that time being a total waste. Plus, I always promised myself I would finish what I start because that's how self-doubt wins when you're a writer. "Well, this sucks so much I shouldn't even finish it. But the next one will be awesome. Huh, this one sucks too? Well, the next one..." And so on. All books suck in the middle of the writing of them. Or, to put it another way, books ALWAYS sound a lot better and exciting before you actually go about trying to put them on paper.

I've finally got a working synopsis, so I've got a pretty good idea of how it all comes together. But I don't feel like the spark that holds these things together is there. But perhaps I'm just too close to it. My goal was to have three chapters of the revised draft finished as well so I could send it to various sources who've volunteered to read for me. But I'm struggling with that too. I feel like I'm just retreading everything that's already been done by other writers and better than me too. This is not my home "genre" so maybe I just feel self-conscious because of that.

So what do you think? Keep plugging away and get the three chapters done, perhaps by setting an enforceable due date? Or just be merciful and shoot this thing in the head (metaphorically, of course)?