I've started work again. Banana Boat Sunday is still mere pages away from completion, but I can't bring myself to finish it; I really don't know why, and if someone would give me the encouragement to keep going, that would be very welcome. I'm in the midst of creating a novel based on the unsolved case of the Little Lord Fauntleroy murder back in 1921, and in the beginning pages of Lightning Round, which is a sort of thunderdome with fast cars, princesses to be saved, and a skinny, knob-kneed man in the center of it all with coke bottle glasses and a desire to save his enslaved brother. I'm excited to work on the latter, as it has no rules and is a ton of fun to write. But the former, which I don't have a name for yet, I'm so intimidated by that I haven't started it yet. It's planned out to the most minute detail, but I have this notion in my head that it must be good, it must be spectacular and award-worthy, and that it somehow will be my breakout novel. I need to get into the headspace of where I'm supposed to be: writing for fun, and enjoying the process. I have to remember that despite all the Paolini's of the world, I do not need to become a novelist at seventeen, my work doesn't have to grace college classrooms, and that above all, my work is for myself and friends who want to read it.
My head feels like it's on fire right now. I've been working on this novel since March, it's mere pages away from being finished. I am an accomplished student, I write very well, I've written since I was nine years old, I've had access to an almost unending library of wonderful books, and yet - and yet. It remains so juvenile. I write, I love it; I look back and I hate it. It's like an uncooked egg. My characters are capable of great things; they are doing great things, discovering themselves, making changes in their world, and they are fresh, they are vibrant, they are alive. I can see this world so clearly that I can nearly taste the air. But when I look back on my writing it just looks so awful and juvenile, like some twelve year old wrote it. I'm 17 right now. What am I doing? Is it really as bad as I think it is? I just want my children, my characters, to succeed. I want everyone to be enthralled in their journey. I don't want success or fame, I just want to be able to tell a good story. I don't know if I can even keep writing right now.