Before I chicken out...

The last few weeks have been a struggle. Of identity. Of figuring out what I'm doing with this blog and my life. And, most importantly, of realizing that my main goal is to write fiction, but fiction keeps eluding me.

I've started so many projects. Books. TV scripts. All long projects because I love what you can do with a long project. The thing about long projects, though, is... they take a long time. Months. Years. Enough time that I feel a lot of pressure to "get it right" so I don't waste my time.

The question is, how do I know it's "right" when I'm first starting out? I've fallen into the trap of believing that the right project will come with zero doubts and "feel right" 100% of the time. And after multiple failed attempts, it's come to my attention that's not how creativity works. You'll think of new ideas in the middle of your project and want to abandon what you're working on for something shinier. You'll hit plot holes and wonder why you ever thought this was a good idea in the first place. You'll get to the end of a scene and have no idea what happens next. You'll get stuck editing the same page fifty times and doubt that it'll ever come out right. And on top of that, you constantly have to fight the fear that you'll release it to mass criticism (or worse, crickets).

In most other fields, the thing you try either works or doesn't, and that feedback shows you how to move forward. Writing, like other subjective endeavors, doesn't have that. You might send a book out to five beta readers and get five totally different reactions. It requires you to find confidence in yourself and your voice so you can decide what goes in, what stays out, and when it's done even though you could continue editing it forever. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty awful at being comfortable with ambiguous things.

Lately I've been down on myself about how easy it is to publish a blog post compared to how difficult it is to finish a piece of fiction. But then I realized that actually, that's not entirely true.

Writing blog posts used to terrify me. When I first started this blog, I told no one about it for months so I could just hit publish and teach my brain that the whole internet wasn't going to cancel me for daring to speak my mind. Then, I started announcing posts on Instagram to close friends in my stories. I would obsessively check IG every hour after I posted to make sure I hadn't offended anyone. It took weeks of positive comments to believe that maybe I wasn't completely terrible and I could post it wider.

Being vulnerable requires baby steps, particularly if you've believed most of your life that your real self is too much or that you aren't good enough.

I finally realized that if I ever want the fiction thing to become reality, I need to start smaller. Like, waaaaaaaay smaller. Something I can finish and publish before I get too in my head and chicken out. Something that will allow me to test ideas, style, voice, and get a real sense for what works. Somewhere I can find people outside of myself to read it and (hopefully) give some feedback so I can teach my brain I'm not a total fraud.

And that place is going to be An Experiment in Fiction (yes, that links to the first story – feel free to enter your email if you want to subscribe or hit "No thanks" if you want to read the story first).

Just like this blog, I'm not 100% sure what's going to be there yet other than short fiction. Initially, it's mostly going to be flash fiction – probably under 2000 words. Eventually there might be multi-part stories or chapters of books. Probably leaning toward fantasy / mythology / maybe sci-fi (although this first story is not really any of those).

Who knows?! It'll be an adventure. What I can promise is that they will be finished, they'll be free (although I might add a paid option at some point), and they'll be 100% written by me.

I'll also continue writing this blog for now for more behind-the-scenes style writing. As things progress, I'll figure out how to better connect things together. But for now, if you'd like to subscribe here and/or there, hit "Subscribe" and enter your email address on the appropriate pages so I send you the right things.

If you've read this far, thank you so much for your support. Whatever you read just this post or every piece of work I put out, whether or not you subscribe, it means so much to me to have people read the words I write. I appreciate you, and I hope you'll keep coming back for more.