velocity

I’m writing a novel. It is now going on six years and I’m doing the same thing I do every year at this time. I’m panicking. I kept telling myself that this is the year. I’m going to finish it. There is no way I am going to sit here a year from now, in the same situation, with the same sense of disappointment. I’m really going to do it this time.

This is the year.

I know what the problem is. Well, problems. It isn’t that I’m having trouble with the story. It is that I am having a difficult time making it a priority. And I have to come to terms with the fact that it is not going to be finished until I do make it a priority. I just ned to make the leap and start learning how to use the word no.

The second problem is that I’m scared. I wrote a novel when I was 28. It was good. It was good enough to land me an agent. And I thought I had hit it big. But not one publisher would bite. I was stunned. Disappointed. Depressed. My life pretty much fell apart after that. My wife asked for a divorce. I lost everything. It was no one’s fault but my own. I let it eat me alive.

Now, almost ten years later, I have a new life. A new family. And I am afraid that if I finish this book and it doesn’t get published, my life will fall apart again. I know it is stupid. But it sits in the back of my head to the point where I lose all confidence in myself, in my story.

But this is going to be the year. No matter what happens, this is going to be the year.