Drawing from the Well
Queries Sent: 1
Total Queries: 15
Rejections: 1
Scenes Arranged: 1
Total Scenes: 232
It’s not a zero-scene day, but I was hoping to do more. Meibor’s scenes are so hard to put together, though. I’ll get there. After that, we’re in the Midpoint! I’m really excited for this critical turning point and all the allusions and allegory that will come with it. Plus, I had a killer idea for a scene just after the Midpoint that is going to ripple forward into Book 6!
Filling the Well
1984: 18%
A Good War: Page 16 of 92
I’m surprised I got ANY reading done yesterday. Wish it was more, but I was being helpful.
Polishing the Well
My wife participated in a styled wedding shoot at a local wedding venue yesterday. After work, I went up and helped her. We were there MUCH longer than I was expecting, but it was beautiful and might actually get my wife’s work into The Knot magazine which is a huge deal for her business.
Well Chat
Riding the Emotion Roller Coaster
This is the final post in my week-long Doubt series. We’ve spent the last six days talking about what I consider to be the staged levels of doubt:
Questioning Yourself
Semantic Doubt
Structural Doubt
Foundational Doubt
Impostor Syndrome
Overwhelming Fear
After all that, what else could I say about doubt? Honestly, not much. We’ve talked about how the various doubts manifest and how to deal with them and it all comes down to one thing: ride it out and gain control on the upswing.
Doubt is an emotion just like any other. When it first hits you, you’re at its mercy because you didn’t see it coming. As you remain submerged in that emotion, you start to adjust and gain some clarity before finally grabbing hold of the emotion and mastering it yourself. That is until it comes around again unexpectedly, of course.
How does this apply to doubt? Exactly the same way. You don’t see doubts coming. They creep up on you. Next thing you know, you’re questioning truths you previously held to be self-evident. It takes a moment to let the fear and doubt in, let it work its dark magic, and then send it on its not-so-merry way. You have to stick to the truths you know. You have worth. You have talent. You have determination. Emotion be damned if it tries to stop you from fulfilling the dream you’ve chased this long. You didn’t work this hard just to let it flit away on the wind like dandelion seeds.
Doubt is a natural part of life, though, so use it. When we doubt things, it makes us reevaluate what we thought to be true. It makes us go over our plans again and make sure they’re wired tight. Doubt is what led me both to an editor AND to some of the sweeping changes I made for Draft 6 and my book is MUCH the better for it. Doubt in and of itself is not bad; it’s all about how you use it.
So get out there and use it. Let it come in. Let it make you question some things. Answer the questions. Move on. You’ve got this. If I can write a book (even if unpublished yet, just writing the book is a huge victory) so can you. Pull back those dandelion seeds and grow something beautiful. Get out there and get creating.
May the tides carry you to safer shores.
BSG