IWSG Finish Worry

It's a new year and while there are many going with resolutions and goals (I did my goal post this morning) it's also a good time for an Insecure Writers Support Group post.

Right now in my writing I'm at the editing phase, or at least the trying to edit around work and slacking off phase. And I'm back to a familiar insecurity: can I ever finish?

This is an insecurity that was first faced with just finishing a novel first draft. 2 years of attempts at NaNoWriMo and only getting up to 14,000 words on a single story certainly made me wonder/doubt back then if I could actually finish a single novel. Never imagined I could write a whole novel, let alone doing it in a month. But oh have I changed on that front. Now I just wrote 165k in November and have 4 finished first drafts with 5+ in the middle of with promise of finish. But a finished first draft isn't the end of the process.

Will I ever finish editing? Will I ever get something ready to submit?

I don't know yet because I haven't done it before but like NaNo, I'm going to keep trying until it happens.


Do you worry about this?

IWSG

Been a long time, but today gets two posts because it's also Insecure Writer's Support Group day, which happens once a month. The last time I posted one of these was October 2011.

This month's topic is....

Feeling lost on the writing journey

I get this feeling often and so thought it would be a good one to share with the group on my first blog back since I didn't do very good keeping up with the monthly posting in the past. Even right now I am having that lost feeling. I think part of it is that when you first looking at the idea of writing a novel there is to some degree that thought of "how hard can this be" and "how long can it really take". When I was at the second writing conference, hearing people talk about how many years it took them to get published and the average number of years being over 10 years, it was almost troubling. But the longer I go, the more I get it. But also the more lost I start to feel.

Don't get me wrong. I love writing and I don't do it just for the dream of publication. I want to write my novels and if I don't then I'll just keep getting more ideas and more characters yammering in my head and at some point that may lead to insanity (lol). But at the same time, I currently don't have a handle on where I stand on this writing path.

It's almost like that feeling of treading water and wondering how much longer I have to tread before I can move forward. I am starting to edit, so that's a good move forward but it's going to be a long process and involve more treading water. But I still hope one day I'll have a finished product  I am truly proud to say I wrote.


Anyone else feel lost?
How are you feeling this month?