Writing Anxiety

I never knew trying to write a novel would be this anxiety producing..how hard..how, well, I don't know the word yet. I'm definitely "with book" and there is somewhere in my head a "due date." Today I had worked my hour with Emily, and I needed to somehow decompress. The work had been hard. The content sensitive. If I could afford it, I'd keep Emily on phone for another hour discussing the hour before. Ha. But I can't afford, so....

I checked my e-mail; wrote two friends about writing anxiety, and called my boyfriend, asking, "Do you really think I could ever publish a novel." His response. "Why not?"

But still this kind of animal psychic pacing is hard. Being all churned up from reading material that is sensitive to me, personal, and also, sometimes creeping tentatively up to a place where I say, "Hey, that page was dam good."

I feel the need to just share this anxiety. This is the kind of blog I may regret writing tomorrow. But I know intellectually this is what a blog is for. To share the highs, lows, and the writing journey with all its strange doors, odd odors, and unpected noises in the night.

You know, people don't go public with inside things .Right? No, wrong. We have to write about sobbing, sexual attraction, bad dreams, and events that are raw and painful to share. And I've written about all those. Put them on paper, going public. Wow.

I hope someone responds to this blog. I'm curious about the level of anxiety for others. For me it comes and goes. Right now it's HIGH.

After finishing hour with Emily, I went to my workroom and pulled out my file with The Novel's pages in it. It's heavy. I'm going to have to use another file folder next time I file hard copy. And I felt very proud looking at all those pages. l can barely remember writing the first chapter, but it's my typing, my editing marks, all the little cross outs/ideas for improvement.

This is not Claire's fantasy of writing a novel, it's my real novel in progress...substantial progress.

I put it back in the file. Checked e-mail. (Please someone write me a prosaic post.) My boyfriend had sent a vacation plan for this Spring in Vermont. And that was good to think about. Not scary.

I got out one of my Borders' journals (remaindered at $5.99), and started to journal. Wrote about my need to make a chart of character's names for the book. I'm forgetting what I called minor characters in first chapter. I could track some events so I don't do a scene over (as I did today). I need to write about the growing conviction that I will write this novel and will rewrite it and then will revise it. And, that is my goal. And maybe doing this is bottom line of what is scaring me After years of relative silence, I feel like I'm yelling fron the roof, "Hey, look at me. I'd like you to read this."

In the last chapter I've done, I left my main character phoning a friend who had written her she was feeling suicidal. What's going to happen?
I don't know. In fact, am I going to kill her off? Poor Leona, I really don't want to do her in, but probably will.

I've introduced the love interest. Where is that going? And, and, and...so many questions. Got to slow down. Don't write today. Clean the kitchen I think. I've been writing a lot each day for quite a while. Maybe a day's rest. Or I could go back to a short story I had promised myself to copy and mail to some friends.

I suddenly realize and laugh, here I am writing to decompress from writing. The problem is also the cure- wish I could say that more beautifully. Maybe, the terror's answer is within that dark terrible place you go, fingers moving quickly, not knowing what will be next.

The process of writing reminds me of going through the waves at the ocean and beyond. I've never done that. But, where I am now, my feet aren't touching bottom. So, I'll do some prosaic things to ground me and then move out in the water again.

I'm so so lucky to be in this place. But, ah, it is not comfortable this minute.