I haven’t updated this blog in three weeks because the last post I made was about how I was going to jump in to the novel I wanted the whole project to be about. I was talking about exactly what I was going to write about, where I’d start it, how I’d try to get some kind of screen recording going so you could see the whole process, all that.

And then what happened?

Well. What happens to a lot of writers, artists, and creatives in general when they make grand and bold claims about their intentions.

I got scared. I got inside my own head about it. I got anxious. I kept putting it off, and the longer I put it off the more I felt like I wasn’t allowed or wasn’t worthy or a dozen other reasons not to write it.

Sometimes I have an idea and I sit down and fifty pages will pour out all at once, pure and uncut, and understandably I’ll feel so accomplished and warm like I’m a real writer and this proves everything I’ve learned over the last 25 years has actually gotten me somewhere. Hell, the book I published in March, the first book I ever finally put out there (despite having finished, like, eight other books before that one) was a unique and bizarre experience for me. I started writing it in October of 2022 and finished it three months later, in the beginning of January 2023. I have never finished a whole book that fast.

The other project I’m working on right now, or rather the sequel, I’ve had in the works in novel form for easily four years.

And every writer has That One Story, the Big One, the One They’ll Remember Me For, and my That One has been in the works for eleven years because it’s epic fantasy and just like everything else in my stupid head it has to be perfect.

Sinks the Sun, the published book, had exactly two versions. The first was a handwritten start, the first couple of chapters. The second was the final version, where a few things changed from the original and I edited as I went along. It’s the first story I’ve ever written that quickly or that gave me the feeling that it was actually done.

The project I’m working on right now, the first book anyway, the finished version was the fourth novel draft, but there was also a journal-style draft and two versions before that which were intended to be comics.

That One Story for me has had seven drafts, three of which were fully completed before I scrapped them.

The Lesser as I mentioned in the posts summarizing it has evolved from a zombie apocalypse survival horror story which had no less than five drafts before I realized it simply didn’t work as what it was.

I’ve written dozens of story stubs, serialized stories that got abandoned, one-shots, and summaries of potential ideas that never got off the ground.

Some of them I dropped because they were bad. Some because the ideas didn’t work and I didn’t want to put in the effort to fix them. Some of them, though, had potential. Some of them were finished, and with editing could have been something. But what happened?

When confronted with the idea of working on them, I froze up. I got anxious. I got up in my own head, just like now, and instead of trying I just avoided the whole issue.

I’ve been writing side-stories, fanfics of my own work pretty much, to try to get myself to break the shackles my brain has put on me. And it’s helping, a little bit. It helps to talk about it with people who understand, or people with whom I have felt comfortable enough to share my work. Fans of my characters, looking for information I just don’t include elsewhere.

But that’s not helping me write this story. So maybe I take a step back from this for a little bit and clear my head, or maybe if I do that it means I never pick it up because that’s what I do, I make promises and I don’t follow through because my brain won’t let me.

This is what it means to be an artist, I guess. The stereotype of an aggravatingly tormented soul absorbing pity like the limp-noodle play-dead of a tantruming ferret isn’t inaccurate.

Me, I like ferrets. But I like weasels better. And you know the difference between a ferret and a weasel?

Weasels are fearless. Weasels see an enemy eight times their size and sink their teeth in and writhe and thrash about and take whatever unfortunate creature thought they could best them to the ground. They’re killing machines. Weasels are my favorite of nature’s adorable, indomitable, vicious little guys.

I’m going to aim for weasel, rather than ferret. Sink my teeth into this anxiety, depression, self-doubt. This is an enemy much, much bigger than me. It always has been, and it probably always will be.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t take it to the ground.

If that’s what it takes to earn back my ability to write, to tell stories, to allow myself to experience and enjoy what I love to do, then it’ll get done.

I only ask patience. From myself, from my friends, from anyone who might read this. Be patient with me.

And be patient with yourself. If you’re fighting, too. If you’re struggling to start, to continue, to believe it’s worth the time and the effort, to believe that you have a story worth telling, please give yourself some grace. Your story, whatever it is, is worth waiting for as long as it’s important to you.

Write away, my friends. I hope to return soon.