Scaredy-pants

Yesterday was supposed to be a beautiful day: just me, the coffee, the copious notes, and the laptop, all working together in synergistic harmony to create if not a masterpiece, then at least a decent chunk of the rough draft of Chapter One.

My plan was simple: expand the chapter outline into a scene by scene breakdown and then start writing. The scene by scene breakdowns are basically free-flowing paragraphs that describe who is doing what, where they are, how and why they are doing that, and identifies the conflict in the scene. They were inspired by (and modified from) Elizabeth George's Running Plot Summaries in Write Away, which you probably can tell by now that I pretty well adore.

I humbly submit that it was a good plan, and probably would have worked if I had not been held captive by a sudden whopping attack of good, old-fashioned fear.

It took me until about 8:30 p.m. (EST) to realize what was happening. The day started off normally enough. Coffee, clothes, check my goal list for the day- no problem. Opened up the Scene by Scene document for Book One, Chapter One, hit the I-Tunes playlist on shuffle, and froze. Ten minutes later, I decided it had to be my desk. It was a little cluttered. My younger son's school books and whatnot were right on the shelf above me, and little messes everywhere. Twenty minutes later it was beautiful. Problem solved. Wrote 2 scene descriptions before it was time to get the family rolling along for the day.

After younger son was done with academic pursuits for the day, I settled in for a nice writing session at my beautiful desk (door open for easy access for the boy). Another freeze settled in, interrupted by "Mommy, I can't find...", which led to a spur-of-the-moment decision that today was really the perfect day to completely reorganize his bedroom and closet (total time: 4 hours altogether- some in the afternoon, some in the evening), followed by the decision to make chicken pot pie for dinner (in spite of the fact that I had something else planned, and none of the ingredients, which meant a trip to the grocery store). During older son's speech therapy session, which is perfect writing time (everyone's quiet except my son and the therapist), I decided it would be a great time to start exploring the blogosphere- something I've been meaning to do, but not during my sacred writing hours (btw, I love blogged).

So, by 8:30 p.m. (EST), I had only written 2 scene descriptions. I was near tears (and I'm not a crier, except during Publix and Hallmark commercials). The laundry needed to be folded (husband had no pants left), so of course I took a long shower and tried to figure out what was wrong with me.

I'm scared of screwing this up. This is the best idea, writing-wise, I've ever had. It makes perfect sense to be terrified and it's utterly stupid. No one is going to grade my rough draft. No one ever has to see it. I can make it pretty once I revise it.

So I said to my scaredy-pants self, Sit down, shut up, and write.

Which is what I did, until I finished the scene by scenes for Chapter One at 11:13 P.M. (EST) last night.

Which is what I will do today until the rough draft of Chapter One is finished today.