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Day Ninety-One: ... Now What?

8/25/2015

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In the immortal words of Ricky Bobby, "I don't know what to do with my hands."

So I finished the draft yesterday, and I know I'm supposed to wait two weeks before looking at it, but my brain is spinning around like my protagonist's brain does when he is in the middle of a project, and I need to write. But where do I start? 

There are ghosts wisping out of the manuscript, whispering things that I should work on, but they dissipate before I can grip them and pin them down, and that's my grossly poetic and tired way of telling you that I don't know where to concentrate my efforts. 

So instead of writing, I sat in my car this morning, listening to character playlists and staring straight ahead with that stare I get when the panic starts to rise. The guy next to me in the parking lot was weighing down his truck with furniture, and he kept looking at me as he nodded in and out of the apartment building. But I didn't move, I just let the anxiety come over me like a wave, and Alex was at work, and there were wedding programs to do.

What if I do all this work, and it doesn't amount to anything? What if the book is too late? I wouldn't have been able to write this book back in 2011 when the market looked ripe for it. Gramma was still alive. Wil was still alive. I wasn't completely, fully in love. I wasn't afraid of losing Alex to some car crash on the interstate. I hadn't had the conversation I had yesterday with my friend. And most importantly, I hadn't had my heart broken, and I had to have my heart broken in order to write this book.

So it's no fault of mine. But what if it's too late?

But as you know, I wrote a journal entry a few days ago, talking about my anxiety, and I said that I did not want to wonder who I could've been if I hadn't had some sort of mental whatever. So I got out of the car, texted Alex quickly, and I went into my apartment and finished my very gorgeous, very ribbon-tastic programs. 

I made lunch. I kept listening to music on character playlists. I started planning on what I would work this afternoon. And now I'm sitting at Paradise with Kate and I have no idea what I'm going to write, but I'm going to write. I'm going to keep writing. 

This book is special, especially now that it doesn't have a dumb ending. And no one ever knows where their writing is going to end up. So I can either tharn and give up now, never knowing what it could have been, or I can push forward and maybe fail. 

But maybe not. 
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