Clean slate

They say confession is good for the soul... Although I don't know if anyone reads these messages apart from my best friends Rachel and Eve and they already know pretty much everything about me. But hey, a confession is a confession, even if there is no one on the other side to listen to it. 

So here goes...

I don't like to be obligated to do something. 

In fact, the more you push me, the more I slow down. Also, I don't like the pressure of the faith people put in me, I'm always afraid of letting them down. Yes, I do not think much of myself, my "products" or my capacities. Which is why I am terrified of writing that last book to my Nellie series: I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint the readers who are waiting for it with passion and eager in their eyes.
I've always been that way: either I cannot believe that someone would like something I have written that much, or if I believe it, then I'm scared I'm going to let them down with the next book. 

Stupid, uh? 

All of that has made writing practically unbearable for me.
But there's more! Now that I'm a "professional" writer, I have all this knowledge about writing, right? (Narrator type, story type, POVs, storytelling, do's and don't's, etc.) My head is filled with a thousand advice on how to write "good books". (Talk about subjective, uh?) I am so full of these advice, that they completely paralyze me when it comes to writing. And if, by means of strong-willed struggle against myself, I do manage to write something down, then I analyze it in its most infinite, intimate details to make sure that it's the best I can produce. I do that for every single word I write...

Can you imagine it?

It's maddening, really!
But I've come to realize that it was a necessary passage because I've learned a valuable lesson because of it... It's best I describe it with an analogy: make-up.

Make-up is a nice way to conceal flaws and highlight beauty, right?
But what happens when you focus on every pore in your face and end up putting on waaaaay too much make-up?

...

...
...
It ends up being the only thing you see.

That's what I did with Terra Fae. Heck, that's what I did with ALL of my novels in The Dreams section of this blog. And now, when I look at them, I don't feel joy; I don't feel passion; I don't wanna immerse myself in them again; I cannot even relate to the characters anymore!
I simply feel numb. And obligated.

So, after all this reflection, after all this explaining and this thinking, I've taken a decision: I'm going to do the unthinkable.

I'm clean-slating.

All of my novels, gone! (Well, except Nellie 4 since I made a promise to write it during this April's Camp NaNoWriMo). I'm starting anew. Like I'm an unpublished writer. No one's expecting anything from me and I'm going to write what I feel like regardless of what I know about writing.

I trust my brain (and my subconscious) will do the rest of the work for me. I mean, I will apply the writing rules I think are important all by myself, automatically, without thinking about them.
And while I'm working on a brand-new project, I trust that my older novels will age in the back of my head and only the worthy ones will emerge once again.

So, as of now, think of me as a writer with a clean slate! ^_^

I hope this will work...