Today, I decided to prioritize sleep again. I am still struggling to face down this stressful situation at work and am not feeling any better physically or mentally. If I was professional, I would be writing anyway, but I am not willing to push myself to that degree. Given my current situation, if I was to push myself on writing, I would have to take my foot off the gas at the day job, instead, and that’s not something I am willing to do. I can’t just become a slacker.
Perhaps if I had more confidence in my writing and that this could lead to an escape, I would be more willing to sacrifice in the short term in order to transition sooner to an independent lifestyle. But I don’t have that confidence, in part because I have yet to publish any significant fiction or establish a track record.
And I don’t have anything published in part because I lack the confidence to force myself to push through.
My current crisis of confidence is in my scene construction. I still don’t feel good about how I plan and execute them, and the more I read about scenes, the more I understand that my previous scenes so far in this book are not particularly good. I keep wanting to go back and redo them all, but I know that’s not right for now. I should instead be practicing my scene skills as I work forward in the story and only go back to revise the past scenes once I have my writing style down.