Days off and Doubts

I think this whole internet thing is fantastic, really I do.  Finding a community of hundreds of other writers - both aspiring and published - is such an amazing thing, and sometimes I wonder how writers like Jane Austen or J. D. Salinger survived without it.

However, having immediate access to this whole community has its drawbacks.  First of all, there is a lot of pressure to not only finish your manuscript, but also to get your name out there before even attempting to publish it, whether via blogging, tweeting, facebooking, foruming, texting, emailing, youtubing, head-against-the-computer-screen-bashing, and what have you.  A lot of pressure...lot of pressure.

whew!  So, what's the other drawback?  It might sound a bit contradictory, but the other drawback is:

Finding a community of hundreds of other writers - both aspiring and published.  Oh. My. God.  There's millions of us out there.  Writing is so easy it's not easy at all.  That's the problem.  There are so many people out there who write, and write WELL, that it's a bit of a gong show trying to get noticed.  This whole thing about queries is terrifying.  It's worse than a resume.  "Please summarize your whole novel, your accomplishments, your writing style, and your personality in 200 words or less."  No problem.

This is what happens on my days off.  I have more time to stare at my manuscript and pick out flaws, more time to read about other writers' amazing achievements, more time look over sample queries that are way better than mine, more time to over analyze all of my critiquers' comments, more time to tell myself that this whole idea of being a writer was bad in the first place.

Of course, as you can imagine, even though I have more free time on my days off, I write less.  Here is how I spend my time instead:

• checking my email every 2-5 minutes
• drinking way too much coffee until I can't see straight and people start to avoid passing me on the sidewalk.
• reading everyone else's blogs ... not so bad in itself, until you add the *comparison* part of it
• listening to Britney Spears on repeat.  Yeah.  I'm totally serious.
• checking my twitter and facebook in between email checks
• realizing I've had too much coffee to even give good critiques on a friend's manuscript
• trying, as a last ditch effort to do something productive, to write an outline for my next book in pen and paper (to escape the internet threat of course)
• waking up hours later, covered in ink, in a bed of crumpled papers.  No semblance of an outline in sight.

So anyway, the internet is great!  Now, wonderful readers, behold the one thing I've actually accomplished today: a rambling blog entry.  

Onward and Upward.

Amanda