I’m about to pack up and leave Starbuck’s, and I feel pretty good.<\/p>\n
Ever since I tried to reread A Clean Slate, I’ve been dreading the idea of starting again. \u00a0I knew that it was necessary. \u00a0The previous incarnation was bad enough that any attempt to fix it was going to be a complete rewrite. \u00a0It is easier and quicker just to dump the previous prose and start fresh. \u00a0Start A Clean Slate with a clean slate.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t easy. \u00a0I managed to put it off last week by doing a bunch of outlining. \u00a0The outlining was necessary, but it also felt like I was procrastinating. \u00a0It felt like I was putting the scary part off for another day.<\/p>\n
Why is it so scary? \u00a0Why does a brand new document fill me with so much dread? \u00a0It’s fear, for sure. \u00a0But why must I torture myself with all of this fear before I’ve even started?<\/p>\n
I opened the new document tonight, selected the manuscript template, and filled in my name and the title of the story. \u00a0Then I procrastinated a little bit more, by taking to twitter and participating in #GenreChat.<\/p>\n
Opening the new document was like riding a roller coaster to the very top, where everything slows down before the mad rush. \u00a0All of the anticipation is there, as well as the fear of crashing and burning.<\/p>\n
#GenreChat finished, and I took the plunge. \u00a0I started slowly, picking up a little bit more speed as the setting started to solidify in my mind. \u00a0It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t torturous, either. \u00a0Self-doubt tells me that it might be torturous to my readers, but to hell with self-doubt.<\/p>\n
I’m a little more than 500 words into the prelude, and that seems pretty good for now. \u00a0It’s a start. \u00a0More importantly, it’s another place where I faced my fears head-on and succeeded.<\/p>\n
Tonight was a good night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m about to pack up and leave Starbuck’s, and I feel pretty good. Ever since I tried to reread A Clean Slate, I’ve been dreading the idea of starting again. \u00a0I knew that it was necessary. \u00a0The previous incarnation was bad enough that any attempt to fix it was going to be a complete rewrite. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}