Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

It happened.

To be honest, I expected it earlier.

Usually, The Crash first hits me at around 10,000 words. This time, it waited until I was at 25,000 words. Foolishly, I thought I’d avoided it.

But I hadn’t.

Sneaky old bastard waited in the dark corners, hiding in amongst the musty, cobwebbed bric-a-brac, watching me wander hallways I’ve not walk down for years, letting me chuckle with pleasure at my own confidence. It let me think that this time, things were different, and they really did feel different.

But they weren’t.

It was all the same, just delayed.

The Crash is that point where my confidence shatters. Anything can precipitate The Crash—reading a particularly evocative passage, the death of a great writer, an annoying similarity between my WIP and someone else’s, even something as innocuous as well-intentioned criticism about word choice (debarkee? or disembarkee?)—but the result is the same:

I can’t write.

This story is stupid.

No publisher will want this.

I suck.

This time, it was all that and more. The Crash saved up every doubt and insecurity I’d ignored, wrapped them all up in a package bound with thorns and barbed wire, and then dropped it on my head when I was trying to drift off to sleep.

My prose is pedestrian.

There isn’t enough story there to make a novel.

No one is going to want to read this.

I suck.

But The Crash overplayed its hand. I had enough presence of mind, even in that hypnogogic state, with literary demons buzzing around my head like deer flies hunting my blood, to realize that The Crash, as clever as it had been with this delay tactic, was running an old playbook.

You see, I’ve been laying down countermeasures for months, years, readying myself for this battle.

The story is stupid? Yeah, it always seems so at this point. Always. So chill.

No publisher will want this? Fine. I never expected to sell it anyway (though I’ll try).

My prose is pedestrian? You better believe it, but this is the first draft, and (say it with me) first drafts always suck.

Not enough to make a novel? Hey, it’ll be as long as it needs to be.

No one will want to read this? Perhaps. I sort of expect that, too. Goes along with the publisher thing. I still want to write it, though.

It’s not as if The Crash had no effect; it did, but it was seriously mitigated by my preparations, and that kept me from falling down the well and having to rely on Lassie to go get Gramps and Mom.

These are my demons—Yours are likely different, but just as potent, and just as sneaky—so here’s my advice.

Prepare.

Remain vigilant.

And write.

k