{"id":78140,"date":"2026-11-01T17:59:23","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T00:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=78140"},"modified":"2026-11-01T17:59:23","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T00:59:23","slug":"getting-started-again-is-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=78140","title":{"rendered":"Getting Started Again is Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I haven&#8217;t made any meaningful advances with my novel in over a month.  I&#8217;ve opened it several times and fiddled around with it, but I feel a little bit lost, a little bit afraid, and very, very distracted.  I&#8217;m not following through on my intentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, my intention was to get up early this morning and spend some time on the exercise bike.  I didn&#8217;t sleep very well last night, though, and Melissa wound up waking me a little after 8AM so we could go to breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Before getting in the car to come home, I decided the best thing I could do next was put myself in front of my laptop for 2 hours and get some writing done.  Two hours should be easy!  I wasn&#8217;t even committing myself to a word count.  Just a block of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, when we got home, I jumped onto Valheim.  One of the things that kept me tossing and turning last night was a project in the game.  I&#8217;m building a pub in a really tiny area, and I kept dreaming about how to overcome the challenge.  I decided that a few hours in the game to get the project done would be fine, and I could write after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m now in a different room of my house, away from my evil, gaming computer.  I&#8217;m writing this from my laptop, with the intention to go immediately into Scrivener after I hit Publish.  Again, I&#8217;ve given myself a block of time, and no other commitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yet, I feel a kind of dread, thinking about trying to work on the story.  I like the story.  I love writing.  I have the time, the energy, and I&#8217;m in the right place.  So why am I apprehensive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s always hard after a long break.  It&#8217;s easy to forget that this is fun.  And of course, I&#8217;m always putting pressure on myself to make this the best it can be, and I&#8217;m afraid that it won&#8217;t be as good as I want it to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Emotions be damned.  It&#8217;s time to get back to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wish me luck.  And for those of you trying to write a novel this month, may the words flow ever in your favor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&#8217;t made any meaningful advances with my novel in over a month. I&#8217;ve opened it several times and fiddled around with it, but I feel a little bit lost, a little bit afraid, and very, very distracted. I&#8217;m not following through on my intentions. For example, my intention was to get up early this [&hellip;]<\/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-78140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78140","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=78140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78141,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78140\/revisions\/78141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}