NaNoWriMo--Day 16? Yikes!

This awesome image, as many of mine do, comes from Stock.xchng. You should check them out.

I haven't been writing as much as I'd planned.  I'm definitely behind on my NaNoWriMo word count.  I'm not feeling worried about it, though.  I'm not so far behind that I can't catch up pretty easily, and I know the coming weekend is wide open for writing sessions.

I am feeling worried about something else, and I just realized last night that this has been going on inside my head for a while.  More than a while--probably for years. 

I went through a period of being afraid that I don't actually know how to write a whole novel, that I don't know how to finish one.  I've been working on that for a few years, and I think I'm at a point where I can make it happen.  We'll know for sure when I actually hit the end of this story (end of January, that's still the intention). But now that I'm feeling a bit more confident in my ability to actually write a whole novel from start to finish, I discovered that there's been a companion fear hiding back there all this time.  I learned that I'm even more afraid that, once I have a completed first draft, I won't know how or be able to revise it into something submittable.

There's good news here.  Not because once I recognized the fear I knew it was unfounded.  I don't have any idea if I will know how to revise my novel into something I can shop around. But now that I've seen the fear and recognized it for what it is, it doesn't stand a chance.  I usually only get completely derailed by amorphous, unnamed fears, and this one has a name now, and that means I own it.  And I will not let a fear that I can see, that I know is there, stop me from doing something I want.

This isn't a quick process for me.  It won't be "Oh, I see you, fear, and now you're out of here for good."  I know I won't traipse through finishing my first draft and then skip merrily through my revisions.  I know the fear will grab me and throw me down and hold me in the corner.  For a bit.  But then I'll shove it back in its box and keep going, because now I know it, and it can't control me, and I will win.

Surprising Myself

When this happens, it's sort of like a double surprise.  Not only do I have a realization that surprises me, I'm always surprised that this can still happen. I'm pretty self-aware.  I journal and examine my emotions and actions and do all the things that help me be a calmer, happier, more balanced person.  And yet, I can still have sudden realizations about myself and about something I'm doing (or, in this case, not doing).  The subconscious is so intricate and just darned cool!

Over the past several weeks (really, several is mild--it's been about two months), I have been avoiding a project (an e-course I'm creating).  It's a project I really want to do.  It's a project I got a start on, and I was so excited about it.  And now I'm resisting it, ignoring it, allowing myself to forget that it even exists for long stretches of time.  Why?  I've lost faith in it.  I've lost faith that it's any good, that I can make it good, that people will want it.  I've become afraid and timid, and so I've stopped working on it.

Why did this happen?  Because I offered it to a very small focus group and didn't get any feedback.  Now, I know that it's mostly because all of the people in the group happened to have big, life changing events happen during the time we had scheduled for the group (out of five people, we had three new jobs and a new opportunity to teach at a major convention in the person's area of specialization).  So really, the focus group just had bad timing.  It probably has very little to do with the content of my course.  And yet I am still feeling as if doing this course is a waste of my time because it's no good.  No logic there.  That's the funny thing about emotions--they don't have to be logical, no matter how much you want them to be.

Now, add to my loss of faith the stress of knowing that I told the participants that I'd have the final version of the course PDFs to them as a gift by the end of this month, and it's a petri dish perfectly primed to grow the best, most stubborn and insidious procrastination around.

Okay.  Now it's all out there.  The project is woefully sidetracked and way off schedule.  Maybe I'll e-mail the group and let them know it will be later than I had anticipated.  Maybe I'll just get it done and send it when it's ready; I think they've probably forgotten that I was planning to send out the final product to them.  Maybe I'll just do it and see how it looks and then decide what to do with it next.  Maybe I'll find someone to talk to about it and ask if it's a worthwhile project--maybe I've committed myself to something that isn't so great.  I do know I can't just sit around doing nothing and fretting over it.  So now I've seen the problem, seen the "why" of it, and now I will move ahead.

Breaking Through and Moving Forward

In Kelly Rae Roberts' Flying Lessons course I am really working on and struggling with coming to grips with my fears.  I let them paralyze me for a while, then I got behind in the class and became more fearful and frozen.  But I'm moving forward now. And one of the big things I want to do with my business that I haven't been pushing forward on is offer classes.



I actually have the rough draft of an online class written up and even shared it with a small focus group to get some feedback.  So clearly it's time to get moving with this.  So, here's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to write the final draft of this class and have it ready to go live over the summer.  I will have it ready and open it for registration by August 1, 2010.

I'm leaping!  And flying, too.  See you up in the air.

January 22 Photowalk

That was so much fun!  I can't believe I kept putting it off because I was worried I wouldn't be able to do enough walking.  I didn't have to do that much walking at all, and I got nearly three dozen really good photos.

Here are some of my favorites:

The sign for Ladybug, my favorite coffee shop.  I had tea there at the end of my walk, as you can see (that shot was taken with my new camera phone).

This sits outside the cycling shop when they're open.  I'd love a ride someday!

The St. Johns Bridge--I love this bridge!

It was a wonderful day, and now that I know I can actually handle some small walks without getting pains in my feet or ankles or knees, I'm going to do this more often.  Prepare yourselves for pictures to go with the words, finally, just as my blog title promises!