I know it happens to all writers (Hell, all people) at some point. That moment where you look at the story that you've been pouring your heart and soul into for months/years and you are overcome with an almost overwhelming wave of insecurity. Nothing you've written is good enough. All those tiny little errors in your draft seem to leap off the page and taunt you. Every wording choice seem wrong and every description seems inept.
That's me tonight. I'm in the beginning stages of editing my newly finished novel. And maybe the best course of action is to sit back and put a bit of distance between us before I tackle the edits. Yet I continue to toil through and it's not going well.
I've texted a friend (my super supportive and encouraging writing budding) today with a desperate... I think I may have to trash a bunch of chapters and rewrite them. Her response was a rather subtle - DON'T DO IT OR I WILL KILL YOU. Great... but I'm still left hating this. I didn't hate it days ago and I know I won't hate in days to come but today, I'm the moron who thought she could write.
How to get through it? Everyone will have their own methods of dealing with self doubt. Mine involves finding reading through other projects to find the decent work there. The stuff that I've already polished and worked on until my fingers bled. Stuff that I am proud of. Just to prove to myself that I can get this novel to that point. And I do a lot of reassurances to myself. "It's only a first draft. It's the bare bones of the novel, now I get to make it great." And I turn to people who know my writing and shamelessly pander for a few words of encouragement. The threat of death above actually helps more than I can say. She is the only person who's read this all. So she knows its a mess, but that comment means that she can see past that to where it could go, and she believes that I can get Scarlet there.
How do you get through the nagging self doubt? Or am I really the only one that deals with it (and I gotta tell you, if thats the case, my insecurities are going to sky rocket. LOL)
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