writer’s block

Right now, nothing I write is any good.  In fact, it’s horrible.  Worse than drivel.  It is so hard to fight against the inner critic.  While it is destructive, it’s also subtle.  I don’t even realize I’m sinking, that I’m avoiding the few precious moments I have to write with excuses.  Then the excuses run out.  Here is the time.  Here is the place.  Here are all the resources I need to work on this project.  Silence.  Oh, all right then dear, how about this project?  Silence. No worry, let’s just try this one.  Rapidly going through all potential projects and dismissing them as not worthy.  Then I realize that it’s not time management that’s the problem.  It’s pre-judging.  In my mind, nothing is any good.  I should just give up, because I can’t write.  I’m just fooling myself that I could ever publish a novel.  No one would ever like such boring, trite, clunky prose, plots tangled up in cliche and melodrama.  No editor would waste her time on it.  My best friends would only read it to be polite.

Is it any wonder that it’s easier for me to start something than to finish it?  I’ve done lots of first drafts, segments of stories, bits and bites, but hardly anything is really polished. I get to a certain point where looking at the story gives me a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I were reading an eviction notice or an obituary.  I have eight works in progress.

So I surf the net, do laundry, read, watch tv, stare off into space, instead of write.  Then, in the last few moments before falling asleep, I try to write something, finding my head nodding over my computer.

The only solutions I have are to not start anything new until I’ve completed something, and to find some other person to give me input, to tell me, in a way I can believe isn’t just being polite, that my work doesn’t suck.  That, in fact, I should keep going. It may not be award-winning, paradigm shifting stuff, but it’s good enough to publish.

Anybody?