Honestly, I’m not even sure if this is the place to post this, since I’m not stopped, just… slowed to a crawl but, does anyone else get freaked out as their word count meter grows?
I’ve just crossed the 100k barrier and, while I’m doing much better than I had been in the 80-100k stretch, that old fear of writing a long book is creeping up on me. Again. Even though I know I’ll cut 20%-30% in edits at least, even though I know I shouldn’t get so worked up over word count, I already factored this one and I knew it was going to be long when I started, even though logical me knows that word count isn’t the be-all-or-end-all as emotional me believes, I’m still struggling with the terror of adding to my word count. It’s not even quality that I freak out about. I don’t fight the “you’re a crap writer” voices (well, much), I fight the “you’ve written too big a book, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or not, no one would want to waste their time reading that” voices.
See, I’d thought this was a problem that was isolated to my last book. I hit 100k and things just crawled till I hit end-game, but I thought, hey, that was because of life-stuff and other non-writing factors. With the two before that one, I didn’t know enough to know there was such a thing as word count constraints, so the third was the first where I had an actual cut-off. And when I started the current book, I was on fire for roughly the first 50,000 words. The curse is broken! thought I.
Cut to me now and it’s slowing again, and that damn mental record about being a failure for writing big books has started up again, and though I’m fighting it, and still making progress, I’m still—comparatively—writing at half my usual speed.
For the last book, I turned off my word count meter on Word, and for the most part, it stays off unless I need to hit a specific word count for some reason. But now, I’ve found even that isn’t working anymore. I’m still peeking glances at my word count, seeing it crawl inexorably up, and then freezing, terrified of adding even one. More. Word.
I know where I want to go, I know what’s happening next, and on the rare occasions where I fall into the writing trance and forget there even is a thing such as word count, it flows. But then comes the next day and I freeze again.
Does anyone else get this?
Also, trying really, really hard to push past my inherent nervousness of posting on Absolute Write. I’m on here every single day almost, and I never post, never talk, never think anything I say is worth putting out there… so, yeah. And I am so, so sorry for the length of this post; I can never write anything short. I am also sorry if this is not the place for this.
I’ve just crossed the 100k barrier and, while I’m doing much better than I had been in the 80-100k stretch, that old fear of writing a long book is creeping up on me. Again. Even though I know I’ll cut 20%-30% in edits at least, even though I know I shouldn’t get so worked up over word count, I already factored this one and I knew it was going to be long when I started, even though logical me knows that word count isn’t the be-all-or-end-all as emotional me believes, I’m still struggling with the terror of adding to my word count. It’s not even quality that I freak out about. I don’t fight the “you’re a crap writer” voices (well, much), I fight the “you’ve written too big a book, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or not, no one would want to waste their time reading that” voices.
See, I’d thought this was a problem that was isolated to my last book. I hit 100k and things just crawled till I hit end-game, but I thought, hey, that was because of life-stuff and other non-writing factors. With the two before that one, I didn’t know enough to know there was such a thing as word count constraints, so the third was the first where I had an actual cut-off. And when I started the current book, I was on fire for roughly the first 50,000 words. The curse is broken! thought I.
Cut to me now and it’s slowing again, and that damn mental record about being a failure for writing big books has started up again, and though I’m fighting it, and still making progress, I’m still—comparatively—writing at half my usual speed.
For the last book, I turned off my word count meter on Word, and for the most part, it stays off unless I need to hit a specific word count for some reason. But now, I’ve found even that isn’t working anymore. I’m still peeking glances at my word count, seeing it crawl inexorably up, and then freezing, terrified of adding even one. More. Word.
I know where I want to go, I know what’s happening next, and on the rare occasions where I fall into the writing trance and forget there even is a thing such as word count, it flows. But then comes the next day and I freeze again.
Does anyone else get this?
Also, trying really, really hard to push past my inherent nervousness of posting on Absolute Write. I’m on here every single day almost, and I never post, never talk, never think anything I say is worth putting out there… so, yeah. And I am so, so sorry for the length of this post; I can never write anything short. I am also sorry if this is not the place for this.