I’m immersed in the last-gasp push of a Top Secret writing project. (Hint.)

I haven’t written this much on a self-imposed deadline since I was in graduate school.

Somehow, even though I remember feeling like a squeeze-out tube of toothpaste at the end, I forgot how much I hate writing.

That feeling never came through on this blog. Insecurity, feeling like I made a fool out of myself, sure. Even disappointment, knowing full well that any night’s post wasn’t everything it could be, taken to its extremes.

But writing like tonight’s, even when I deviated from the plan and added some extra magic to the plot, is Not Fun.

I have this problem, see. When an idea is in my head, it’s great. It can morph around to become the best version of itself, it can breathe and live, and nothing real is pinned on it. The minute you get that idea in to the real world, though, my brain loses interest. Now it’s a real thing, and it’s less than the shining ideal that it can pretend to be inside my head.

Now I know the quality.

And the quality is Not Good. Or rather, Not Good Enough. Never Good Enough.

I’ve never understood why people hang their own art on their walls, and my writing is no exception. Why would you want something on your wall that you could so clearly compare to the perfect ideal in your head, all of the time?

To me, that’s a recipe for self-critical behavior, something I don’t want to fall into any more than I already have.

I don’t want to read my own writing. I don’t particularly even like writing my own writing.

Yet, in some weird way, I still enjoy writing.

Crazy.