No More Fear 07/12/21

How many words per day is 80,000 words per month?

2666.

I like that number, and I like that book.

I’ve written a lot about my struggles with writing on this blog. I am pretty tired of struggling, to be honest. I’m either going to do it or I’m not. I’m not going to beat around the bush anymore. I’ll work on the God$ project as I see fit, but I’m going to finish novels.

Finish. Novels. Start to finish. Finish. Finish. Finish.

I sometimes wonder, if all I really want to do is tell stories for a living, why it’s so difficult for me to…well, tell stories. The answer came to me as I woke up this morning (oddly, after yesterday, when I’d been thinking about death). And it’s actually simple.

I’m afraid.

It’s fear. It’s identity-based. I built my whole life around the idea that I’m a writer. And now there’s nothing scarier than taking a misstep and writing a bad book. There’s something like a reverse sunk-cost fallacy, too. It’s been almost 10 years since my last proper novel (that isn’t part of the Black Gum series). At this point, I’m so down the rabbit hole of not writing, that maybe not writing has become my identity.

Regardless, it’s time to start.

I have a plan in place. No social media. Fully outlined plots. I’m going to start a book, and I’m going to finish a draft in one month.

2666 words per day.

No more fear.

Time to write.