With every new chapter I start, a creeping fear returns to me like a boomerang that I threw five years and forgot about until it knocked my head off this morning at breakfast. Even though I've punched this creeping fear in the nose several times already, it still manages to return. Always with that same question on its floppy, dumb lips: "Is this the chapter that won't get written?"
Even at this stage in my novel, it still manages to return, That memory that I always seem to give up on writing. Maybe it was too hard or I didn't know how to fix a problem or whatever. It's really been a nonfunctional hobby for me until the last couple years. Whether my work needed the right timing, or maybe its the alignment of the planets or my chi being in the right spot, I'm doing it now like I should have done it before.
But with each success comes another round of fear and apprehension. Will it be worth it? Hard to tell. Even setting my expectations to their lowest possible setting, I still wonder if I should bother. Just two chapters from the finish line and it seems like I just started.
I try my best to be ready for the next stages, rewriting and editing and all that, followed by the search for an agent and eventually a publisher. It's a strange new sea of terror and rejection that I'll be taking my little manuscript into this year, and I don't yet feel ready to brave the waters.
