Writer's Doubts and Whining

So here we are on day six. Much as I'd like to allow the world to go spinning off without me while I write, that isn't reality. Right now, I'm sitting in front of the computer, starting to get high off the pain medication I'm taking for a bad tooth. I'm sick from the tooth infection too, but that's being handled by the penicillin. Oh, and the garlic pills, and the multivitamin. The damn cat is tearing the house apart. Tomorrow, I intend to fulfill a promise I made to assist at a goat farm so I can glean as much knowledge in that area as possible. No, not for the book, for a different part of my life entirely.

The intrusion of real life is something I'll just have to deal with. What's really got me tumbling is the fact that my work is going places I never intended and know little about. The more I write, the less it looks like a horror and more like a western. Yup, a western. Not that there's anything wrong with that (Seinfeld, anyone?) Its just that I've read very little of the genre, and I'm wondering how this could be.

Second, I find my confidence faltering. I don't like the idea of people reading a first draft, but I'd like to know if my story is at all engaging. Never mind how "correct" the writing is-I'm pressing for word count and time, so I don't expect to have those things there anyway. The rewrite will handle most of that, including plot holes. But there are times when I wonder if I'm wasting my time.

Which leads to the point of this blog. Should it matter? I'm all for the philosophy that says time is not wasted if it contributes to self improvement, self realization, and the creation of purpose. I do believe we create our own beauty and meaning out of what raw materials we find. Yes, I'm one of those existentialists...deal with it. If I want to spend time writing a worthless novel and it makes me happy, then that's what I ought to be doing and it is NOT a waste of time.

Then again, there are those times when I wonder if I'm just engaging in literary masturbation. It might be fun, but I'm not one to waste time. I want to be productive. Masturbation is not an entirely useless endeavor, but its not one that ought to be shared with the world. Unless you're a porn star. And I am not a porn star and I don't intend to be a hack. I want to share myself...in a literary sense, of course ;-).

So here I am, blogging away, wishing I had a serious reader on hand to tell me to get on with it, and fast! or to forget about quitting my day job. Is my story engaging, memorable? Does any of it stick with the reader past the time it takes to read it? Lofty goals for a first draft, but I am ambitious.

With none of those questions answered, I'm back where I started. People who don't exist outside of my imagination conversing in my head, pictures of places that do exist in some form taking on history that never was and perhaps never could be. And, having purged my doubts to you or to the ether, I go back to giving my attention to ghosts and mist. After I kill the cat.