Just A Geek has stared me in the face for months. It quietly sits here: ~/justageek/working/22augustrevisejustageek.sxw and dares me to open it and get back to work.
As you can see, I haven’t had the courage to work on it since the 22nd of August . . . but I’m starting again today, and I won’t stop until I’m done.
I’m so terrified of this book! I’ve given it a great deal of power over me, and I’m terrified that it won’t be as good as I thought it was a year ago, and that it won’t be as well-liked as Dancing Barefoot has been.
In all the interviews I’ve given, I’ve talked about the blessing and curse of the writing I do: on the one hand, it’s just me, with no filters (not even a speelchek). What I write comes straight out of my heart — mostly because writing honestly is much easier than making stuff up — so when it touches someone, that gratitude they express goes right back into my heart. Of course, when someone savages it for not being cynical enough, or whatever . . . it goes right into the same place, with just as much weight as the praise.
The thing with Just A Geek is, it’s a lot more work, and a lot more of that heart invested in it than Dancing Barefoot . . . so it’s a much bigger risk (and potential reward, I suppose). So I’ve been terrified to work on it, and release it.
When I woke up this morning, I lay in bed and talked with myself about it. It’s so close to being completed, it’s like I’ve run 22 miles of a marathon. It’s stupid not to finish it, and I’ve delayed it long enough.
Normally, I listen to Boingo when I write, but for some reason I felt like hearing Radiohead this morning, so I’m listening to The Bends, and now I’m going to get to work.
If everything goes according to plan, blogging will come to a virtual standstill while I finish this.
Heh. “Just” just started. Thom sang, “You do it to yourself, and that’s what really hurts . . . you and no one else . . . you’ll get no sympathy . . .”
I needed to hear that. Time to write.