Aha! It's Supposed to Suck!

I've written many times about my fervent fangirl crush on The Fluent Self. Yesterday, there was a post about "Day 4 Syndrome." In a nutshell, it's about any project, or class, or whatever, and how after a certain point, you go from sailing along happily to suddenly being stuck in the suck of it… convinced that it's awful, it's useless, and suddenly you're paralyzed.

And I thought, holy crap, this sounds familiar.

Only I used to call it "Chapter 7 Syndrome." That's about the point in any given manuscript that the idea I'd fallen in love with, the one I was so convinced was brilliant and break-out and fun, turned into a mire of absolute merde. That would be the point where I started chanting "you're-a-hack, you're-a-hack" and scanning Craigslist job postings.

Bit extreme? Possibly. Imaginative overreaction?  Probably. But I'm a fiction writer, so I think it's in my job description.  Besides, once the deadline crept up, I'd bite the bullet, finish the project, and come to find I actually liked the book very much.  Granted, that would be a year later, but acceptance does come.

After seventeen novels, you'd think I'd get a grip on this little problem.

Here's the thing that made me smack my forehead with my palm, though, after reading Havi's post.

All this time, I kept thinking: Why do I keep doing this? Why can't I finally (get the right plot, get the right characters, get the right story idea, whatever) and avoid this whole Chapter Seven Suck thing? What the hell's wrong with me??

Then it hit me.

The problem isn't with the process.

THE SUCK IS THE PROCESS.

I could have characters that make Harry Potter look 2D, a plot twistier than corkscrew pasta and a story idea that Dreamworks would pay me millions for. I could "do" everything right, all the way down the line.

And when I hit Chapter Seven, I'm still going to think it sucks.

So from now on, instead of compounding the suck, by beating myself up with "you not only suck, you wouldn't be feeling this way if you'd done (x,y,z.)  You suck because you should have (whatever.) You suck because…"

I'm just going to say:  "Aha. Chapter seven. There you are."

And keep on typing.

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