Doubting Myself

I have a feeling there will be a lot of angsty posts while I'm drafting this book. And I apologize for it in advance. But this blog is supposed to be a chronicle of my journey.

This latest road bump?

I'm doubting something hugely fundamental in the structure of this story.

I'm second-guessing myself on both point-of-view and tense.

I'll give you time to pick your jaw up from the floor.

I've blogged about tense and point of view before.

With HotG (Hammer of the Gods, I changed the abbreviation slightly), I initially started it in third person past tense. One paragraph in I changed it to first person.

5K words in?

I've decided to change it all over to present tense.

Again, I'll give you time for collecting whatever may have been flung in disbelief.

I really feel like there's an immediacy in the present tense which is absent in past. An immediacy which this book may really need in order to be successful.

But then I find I'm doubting that. I am torn between continuing in present tense or reverting to the past tense. I will retain the first person narrative. In light of the doubts I've come to a decision.

For now I'm going to go ahead and forge on with writing it in present tense, if for no other reason than the challenge.

It's good to challenge ourselves once in a while. If I can complete this book the way I've now set about writing it, I'll have proved something to myself. I'll have proved to myself I can write differently. I can write a male MC in first person present tense. I can write an action-adventure novel. I can write first person. I can write present tense.

If we don't challenge ourselves we'll never learn our bounds and figure out how to break them, right?

So here's to experimentation!

A Writer's Insecurity

Rachelle Gardner's post today on the gift of insecurity got me thinking.

I posted a comment over there, but I think I want to expound upon what I said.  In that comment I talked about my first (which became my second) novel, Oracles Promise.  This book took a long time for me to finish that first draft.  (Somewhere in the vicinity of 8 or 9 years.)

Why?

Well, a) I got stuck in revising mode.  Instead of adding new story I tweaked and rewrote what was there.  And b) I didn't have much confidence in the story.  Especially when I'd read other published works.

In 2007, I graduated with my bachelor's degree.  In celebration, my mom and I traveled to New York that summer.  We'd done the same thing when I graduated high school and it was fun for me to sort of bookend my college years that way.  While there, I had the chance to go to an author signing.  The author was Jasper Fforde.  (I'm sorry if you're groaning right now, but this was a huge moment for me in my writing journey.)

I'd been feeling really unsure of my story and the characters and everything at this point.  Around this time I'd actually decided the book needed to be shelved and never finished.  I asked Mr. Fforde if he ever read other peoples' books and felt like what he was writing was utter garbage.  (I may not have been quite so eloquent.  I was speaking to an author I admire.)

When he said all the time, I was shocked.  Yes, I was naive enough to believe that authors don't doubt themselves.  That they're not questioning everything they've written, even after it's published.

But he also said that you have to use it to motivate yourself to improve your own writing skills.

Fast forward to last March when I had the chance to see him in person again.  This time I was rather a blathering idiot when I reached the signing table.  I rambled on about how what he said those years before had stuck with me, kept me going, etcetera.

I'm still sitting here, insecure, doubtful, questioning every word I've ever written.  But I'm realizing that I have the tools I need to overcome those insecurities and those doubts.  I have very supportive writer friends who are there to encourage me.  I have the dojo and my blog.  I have my faith.  I have the words of those wiser than I am, those who've traveled the path I'm just starting on.

I have my doubts and fears and insecurities, but I know I can get past them.  I have in so many ways.  Since that day when Mr. Fforde shocked me, I've finished the book I'd shelved at that point and written three others, with another well under way.