Erin Lodes

In 2018 I finished writing my debut novel (do you call it a debut when it’s the first one you’ve finished or the first one you get published because I haven’t gotten it published in which case I finished writing what I hope will be my debut novel). Now I am in whichever level of hell it is where you can’t move because you’re frozen, otherwise known as querying.

So, in order to unfreeze myself, I am moving on to my next project. Which brings me to my question:

What the fuck do I write now?

I have a lot of ideas, and I’m going to be continuing to work with John (my awesome writing coach) in order to take one of those ideas all the way to a finished novel. But how do I pick which one?

I have two ideas in particular that keep shouting themselves around in my brain. They are both at about the same level of “formed” but are as different as two ideas could probably be. One is contemporary and similar to my first novel, and the other is urban fantasy and very different to my first novel. I want to write both eventually.

So how the hell do I decide which one to write now?

At the crux of this question, as is usually at the crux of my writing dilemmas, is my fucking inability to make a decision.

Not being able to make a decision is what trips me up when I’m outlining, when I’m writing, when I’m editing, when I’m revising. It’s like the whole “see the statue in the block of marble” thing except I can see a million different statues so how do I know which one is best?

I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot and I’ve come up with two parts to it: 1) Perfectionism and 2) Self-doubt.

Perfectionism is the voice in my head that says this isn’t good enough yet. And self-doubt is the voice in my head that says this will never be good enough.

While working on my first novel, I hit up against these two pretty hard. For years. For about seven years if you want to get specific.

And now I’m going to say — over and over and over again — fuck them.

I’m not going to take seven years to write this next book. I will make it as good as I can make it and that will be good enough.

Which brings me back to my question: What the fuck do I write now?

My perfectionism says: you have to pick the right one or your writing career will never be what you want it to be. My self-doubt says: you can’t pick the right one so give up now. And around and around we go on the merry-go-round from hell that’s had me trapped for about a month and a half now.

Well, fuck that.

I’ve made a decision. Honestly, I made it just now, while writing this blog post and sorting out the mess of my brain. And I’m going to run with it. The other idea will still be there when I finish this one.

And, breathe.

Anyway, that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?