I'm afraid to write.
I can't tell you why. I haven't figured out why, only that the layers and layers of muddly things I put between me and what I actually intend to do exist solely to stave off that fear of actually sitting down and committing to something.
It's risky, of course. It's huge. I've already been piecing it together for nearly two years now and can't even claim to be halfway done. To actually finish it will undoubtedly take several more years of my life, and I've been down that road before. Committing myself to a project wholeheartedly only to have it ripped from my hands at the last moment, nearly there, almost finished still slick and smooth with months of my blood poured in it.
If I pull this off, there'll be no hiding. It's getting harder to hide as it is; people are starting to catch on that I'm not just all right at stringing a few words together into a passable aesthetic. Word is starting to get out I'm pretty damn great at it. And if I sit down, if I commit to all those words and lives and worlds and minute details I have to figure out because I'm not just creating something new - no, I'm changing the past ten years of what is and dear God 2002 was a long time ago -
If I do that, and finish it, then I'll have to sell it. Sell me. Put myself out there and not shrink back. Not skirt the shadows. I'll have to go chasing it. And what then? What do I do then? It's pass or fail at that point, no grey area to linger in.
I do so love the grey areas.
Maybe that's what I'm afraid of. Succeeding and failing. Aren't both equally terrifying? Either way, you don't have what you did anymore. Either way, you have to change.
I said last time my words aren't worth listening to, and that's true. Mine aren't. But my creatures... That's another story.
The other question is, and perhaps this is really where the heart of my fear lies - what if I sit down to do this thing and realise I can't?
I can't tell you why. I haven't figured out why, only that the layers and layers of muddly things I put between me and what I actually intend to do exist solely to stave off that fear of actually sitting down and committing to something.
It's risky, of course. It's huge. I've already been piecing it together for nearly two years now and can't even claim to be halfway done. To actually finish it will undoubtedly take several more years of my life, and I've been down that road before. Committing myself to a project wholeheartedly only to have it ripped from my hands at the last moment, nearly there, almost finished still slick and smooth with months of my blood poured in it.
If I pull this off, there'll be no hiding. It's getting harder to hide as it is; people are starting to catch on that I'm not just all right at stringing a few words together into a passable aesthetic. Word is starting to get out I'm pretty damn great at it. And if I sit down, if I commit to all those words and lives and worlds and minute details I have to figure out because I'm not just creating something new - no, I'm changing the past ten years of what is and dear God 2002 was a long time ago -
If I do that, and finish it, then I'll have to sell it. Sell me. Put myself out there and not shrink back. Not skirt the shadows. I'll have to go chasing it. And what then? What do I do then? It's pass or fail at that point, no grey area to linger in.
I do so love the grey areas.
Maybe that's what I'm afraid of. Succeeding and failing. Aren't both equally terrifying? Either way, you don't have what you did anymore. Either way, you have to change.
I said last time my words aren't worth listening to, and that's true. Mine aren't. But my creatures... That's another story.
The other question is, and perhaps this is really where the heart of my fear lies - what if I sit down to do this thing and realise I can't?
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