The question is, when starting something new, how do you silence the voices? You know the ones. “Hey, what ever made you think you could write?” “This is shit ~ you know that, don’t you.” “Not only that, but everything you’ve ever written is shit. Everything, no exceptions.” “That sentence is so wrong, cliché, overwritten, underwritten ~ what were you thinking?” I try and try ~ and bang my head against the wall ~ and try some more.
What I sometimes do is quit ~ and then try something else. Start something new, or pick up something else I’ve been working on. Then maybe read something that inspires me ~ an essay by another writer or a short story I particularly like.
But when that doesn’t work, I know I’m in trouble. Sometimes, it’s not because of the writing but because of life. For instance, right now I have a cold. The hard part for me about being sick is not the physical pains and aches and misery. For me, the worst part is the emotional pit that sucks you down into depression. When you lay in bed and wish you could voluntarily stop your heart.
So at these times it’s best for me just to have faith in the process and know that I’ll come out of it and feel better and to keep trying. And try not to let myself get pulled too far into the vortex.
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