I don’t know why I blog

I don’t know why I blog.

I haven’t worked on the novel since 5th September.

Other than a short story I wrote for a competition which took about four days, I haven’t written since 5th September.

Now I don’t know why I wrote that short story or why I entered that competition. It all seems rather pointless. Obviously if I win, that would be amazing, but it’s not going to happen. The story’s OK. That’s pretty good for me – to say it’s OK – but in reality it probably isn’t. I mean, right now I think it is but I bet if I read it in a year’s time I’ll hate it. Which is good, it means I’ve improved. But it also means the story’s crap.

I also don’t know how I managed it. How I made myself write that story and enter it. Doing something like that now seems impossible.

If everything I write today I’ll hate in a year’s time, what’s the point? But if I write something and still think it’s good in a year’s time, that’ll mean I haven’t improved in a year.

I don’t know which is worse.

Some people say they love writing. I just don’t get that. I used to – when I was in school. I don’t know when I stopped.

I like to think it makes me a better writer – to not like writing – but I probably just tell myself that to feel better about it.

I feel superior to people who say they love writing. Like they’re amateurs and I’m a real writer because I hate it. But who’s the real writer – the person who does it everyday and loves it or the person who avoids it for months? Maybe I’m just jealous.

I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing or where I’m going.

And I don’t know why I blog.

#Writerhell…

…Is trending at the moment (on twitter), which is freakishly relevant to my current state of mind. I seem to be trapped in some kind of…well, I don’t know, exactly. Circle of hate and fear? Hm, I feel a disclaimer coming on:

Warning: the following post was written in writer hell and therefore likely to be rather bleak in a self-indulgent sort of way.

There, now. You’ve been warned. Which means I can now be as angsty as I want without a care for the consequences.

So, back to the circle of hate and fear. It’s making it very difficult for me to get any work done. The thing is, every time I think about getting on with it, I’m filled with this…sense of dread. You’re supposed to wait between drafts and I think that’s the problem. Knowing that that’s what you’re ‘supposed’ to do and thereby using it as an excuse to not want to work. Or maybe this is why you’re not supposed to do it. Who knows? The problem is, I don’t have time to take a month off. And besides, every time I think about the novel, I’m bombarded with all the problems that I need to fix and become convinced that I need to face these issues and find solutions before even attempting draft 2. Otherwise, what’s to stop it being just as much of a muddle as draft 1 was?

But Louise, last Thursday your lovely tutor gave you loads of great advice, why don’t you just follow that?

I wish I could, dear imaginary reader, I wish I could. I tried. I even started the character questionnaire she gave me but I spent so long pondering whether or not she has any scars and where they are and how she got them, while all the time the knowledge that it makes no difference either way hung over my head, that I just couldn’t do it anymore. It raised so many questions that I hadn’t thought of – and really I’ve already got enough unanswered questions as it is. The one thing I don’t need is more of those. And I don’t know, since then the thought of doing anything else just feels wrong.

What it all comes down to is I just don’t want to do it, anymore. I used to want to do it because I wanted it done, if that makes any sense. Now, I think that even if someone came along and offered to wave a magic wand and turn it into the finished, publishable novel, I’d just shrug. If you want, I’d say, I don’t really care.

That’s not true, of course. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be writing an angsty blog post about it. I think it’d be a case of denial, or: if I say I don’t care, maybe I really won’t.

Well, I don’t know. Time is slipping away. And it doesn’t matter what advice I read or ideas I come up with, I always feel like whatever small hope flickers into being gets snubbed out in the shadow of some enormous cement wall.

Anyone else ever feel like this? How the blazes do you get past it? Help, please!