(no subject)

I 98% finished the revised proposal for my new book. (The 2% is mostly collating and emailing, but I do have a tendency to procrastinate really awfully on that sort of thing, so I am On Notice to try to get this out Monday.)

I made significant progress on Yuletide!

So that's something.

I used to be pretty much at peace with my self-doubt. It's like, of course I think everything is terrible; that's just what it feels like to be writing a book. These days it's hard not to see that as a sign that everything is, in fact, terrible. Really, it's pretty irrelevant.

It's hard not to get fixated on getting it right. But the story about the pottery teacher who graded half their students on quantity of pots, and half their students on the quality of a single pot has some truth in it. It's not just that you need to practice as much as possible to get better; it's that greatness is not achieved by trying to be great, but by stepping up to the plate again and again and again, trusting that one day you're going to get just the right pitch at just the right time.

Bad metaphor segue! Whee!