Hai Beautiful!

Writing is scary!

I wanted to write this post ever since I changed my mindset regarding my writing.

Recently I stopped telling myself that “ignoring your WIP is not the same as giving up,” and “you can’t be scard of a writing project!” and started trying to understand the reason why I was indeed ‘giving up’.

Once I’d identified what the hell I was so damn scared of, I was able to start working on ways to make the writing process more enjoyable and comforting for myself. This time around, I am not only writing this novel for myself in my own time, but I am writing it for others to read in real-time on Wattpad.

By avoiding my WIP I am not only letting myself down in many aspects and cementing my beliefs that I can’t commit to things, but I am also letting down people who have committed to, and are genuinely interested in reading my work.

Why have I been avoiding my writing?

I thought that I wasn’t writing because I was so busy with work and seeing my boyfriend that in my free time I would just crash, watch YouTube and maybe slot in some reading time. But in reality, I was actually just putting it off in the same way I do my blogging.

I was putting off my writing because I wasn’t comfortable with the quality I was delivering and I was scared that people would hate it and that it wasn’t of a high standard. Much like I do with all my posts, I freak out before I even begin writing the post/ chapter/ project.

What changed? Why have I got this renewed confidence?

It’s not a renewed ‘confidence’ so much as it is me actually paying attention to why I feeling the way I do.

Over the past year, I’ve learned a lot about self-reflection and understanding the way I feel in order to move forward with life and not get stuck in ruts. This really challenges that whole writing block mentality and proves (at least to myself) that writer’s blocks are just excuses not to write and there is usually something bigger at play stopping me from writing.

I’ve actually taken time to flesh out a plan for my story and even make the huge (but not that huge) decision to change the tense and point of view of the novel from first-person present to third-person past tense. I think this will really help the storytelling aspect and flow of the novel.

Have I been writing?

Well no. Not really.

But what else did you really expect me to say? That I’ve been on a writing sprint ever since I had this huge epiphany…. or maybe that I suddenly found ways to manage my time because I have things I’m passionate about?

Okay, that sounded mean and I’m sorry. I’m just being real hard on myself right now because the reality is, that quarantine has hit us all hard and destroyed everyone’s productivity in unimaginable ways.

I want to make writing plans but I won’t stick to them. So I’m just going to leave you all with this;

I will be writing and I will be uploading the chatpers to Wattpad when I have them written. It will take time and I understand if you are completely uninterested in reading them. But to those who do read them, and are patient with me as I write, I want to say thank you.

And to you reading this post. I also want to extend a huge thank you because you make my writing possible. You give me the confidence to continue, to talk about my writing and even writing these posts feels like I’m not running from my WIP as much as I was.

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See you back here on Monday’s (book reviews), Wednesday’s (storytime/ writing updates) and Saturday’s (other bookish content).