Dejected Thoughts

I hate it when I start to think my novel is crap.

I know most writers go through it every now and then (or at least that's what I tell myself), but it's still depressing. Suddenly, the novel I've been working on for years is no good. I've wasted all that time and energy into something that won't ever make it past the publisher's pile. And I'm a failure as a writer.

Most of the time, it's just a portion of the novel that just doesn't sit right. It either doesn't make sense, doesn't flow well, or just down right silly. So I sit and brainstorm until I realize that it didn't happen *that* way; it happened *this* way. And then I feel better about the story as a whole and get back to writing.

It sucks on the rare days where I think the whole story should just be scraped. I've hit a pretty low point in my life and my writing (which is pretty much only this novel at the moment) is one of the few things that's been positive in my life. So it hits all that much harder when it's a source of woe.

Still, I'm trying to keep movin' forward. What else can I do?