Those of you who’ve been reading along for a while may have deduced a certain … unreasonably high level of expectation placed on me by my own self. There’s a Longfellow quote which summarises this nicely: “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”
I am *mired* in this problem right now. My expectation of myself is that really, I can do a 6400 word chapter in a day. I *know* I can. I’ve done it any number of times in the past. I can’t do it for more than about a week, but I don’t *need* to: five days or so at that rate would finish the book. And so dammit, I *know* I can do it, that I *need* to do it…
…and yet *damn* my brain is tired. Even typing up yesterday’s 3K pretty much felt like a day’s work today. And while I recognise this pattern, I can’t stop myself from thinking that, well, okay, *tomorrow* I’m going to be able to pull off my 6400 words, and that’ll just get me on the road I need to be on: one good day can lead to four or five more, and then this last awful push will be over. I *recognise* that I’m apparently more accurately capable of 3K a day right now, but 3K a day doesn’t finish the rough draft until the end of the month, which gets the book in *over* three months late, and I cannot get past the idea that if I would just get my shit together, I could push through these last 25,000 or so words and could take a couple days to unwind, then do revisions and get the damned thing in by the beginning of May.
Not really in need of reassurance or anything here, just getting my frustration down in words, in hopes that it’ll do…*something*…to my brain.
ytd wordcount: 168,000
miles to Minas Tirith: 281.4
I think most of your loyal fan base would prefer to have a late book that was well written to one that was rushed. Of course, as one of your fans, I’m always happy to see a new book!