Existential Breakdown
It turns out that when you combine what I talked about in 'When to Get a Second Opinion' from a few weeks ago with 'Letting Go' from last week you get an 'Existential Breakdown' this week.
After much deliberation about the story problems I was having with Book 6, I decided to send what I had to someone I trust to get a second opinion on what I thought was wrong. I did a whole bunch of rewrites beforehand to get it into what I decided to call an 'alpha+' state (not quite beta, but better than a first draft). That done, eager as I was to find out if my brain was broken or the story was, I sent it off.
Then I fell apart.
I've had this ending locked up in me for so long, sharing it with someone else was way harder than I thought it was going to be. I expected the collapse to come when it was published, not this early, so it caught me completely off-guard. It didn't help that I was really tired from other things, but it all hit me at once and I turned into a blubbering mess.
It felt like... this was it. The ending of this series was the One Thing I had that the world needed from me, and now it's outside of me and I have no more use. The Great Work was done, my purpose fulfilled. It was more than just letting go (as I outlined last week), it was more fundamental than that. I don't know that I've ever really had an existential crisis before, but that's what gripped me when I hit the 'send' button on the email.
I knew (and predicted on this very blog) that the feelings surrounding the completion of the From the Ashes of Victory series were going to be both strong and complicated, but I didn't know how strong and complicated. I was not expecting to be questioning the purpose of my existence when I sent off a pre-beta version of it to someone. It wasn't cathartic, the book's not out yet, it really was feeling... bereft of purpose. It was as strange as it was intense.
There is still a ton of work left to go (as of this writing, I haven't gotten any feedback yet), but I don't know how much, so I can't really update you on anything beyond 'all the feelings happened'. But if you follow me here and you're reading this, you're probably interested in the process that got me to where we are now.
A messy, beautiful process that I'm lucky enough to have been able to take. Just a few more steps, and the journey will be complete.
Then it will be time for the next one.
After much deliberation about the story problems I was having with Book 6, I decided to send what I had to someone I trust to get a second opinion on what I thought was wrong. I did a whole bunch of rewrites beforehand to get it into what I decided to call an 'alpha+' state (not quite beta, but better than a first draft). That done, eager as I was to find out if my brain was broken or the story was, I sent it off.
Then I fell apart.
I've had this ending locked up in me for so long, sharing it with someone else was way harder than I thought it was going to be. I expected the collapse to come when it was published, not this early, so it caught me completely off-guard. It didn't help that I was really tired from other things, but it all hit me at once and I turned into a blubbering mess.
It felt like... this was it. The ending of this series was the One Thing I had that the world needed from me, and now it's outside of me and I have no more use. The Great Work was done, my purpose fulfilled. It was more than just letting go (as I outlined last week), it was more fundamental than that. I don't know that I've ever really had an existential crisis before, but that's what gripped me when I hit the 'send' button on the email.
I knew (and predicted on this very blog) that the feelings surrounding the completion of the From the Ashes of Victory series were going to be both strong and complicated, but I didn't know how strong and complicated. I was not expecting to be questioning the purpose of my existence when I sent off a pre-beta version of it to someone. It wasn't cathartic, the book's not out yet, it really was feeling... bereft of purpose. It was as strange as it was intense.
There is still a ton of work left to go (as of this writing, I haven't gotten any feedback yet), but I don't know how much, so I can't really update you on anything beyond 'all the feelings happened'. But if you follow me here and you're reading this, you're probably interested in the process that got me to where we are now.
A messy, beautiful process that I'm lucky enough to have been able to take. Just a few more steps, and the journey will be complete.
Then it will be time for the next one.
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