free-floating anxiety

There's a whole lot of that swirling around me at the moment - or rather, in me. It's a very odd physical sensation and not at all pleasant - it's like the feeling you get right before you go down the other side of the rollercoaster, except not as dramatic and much more mysterious and disturbing.

I know part of what this is about. Ditching Blackwell, or relegating him to the back burner, is a huge step towards casting away the last bits of what this novel was years and years ago when I first started writing it. A little scary. Kinda feels like jumping off a cliff, which, of course, would explain the feeling.

But then some of it has to do with my progress. It's not like there hasn't been any - I'm working steadily and regularly, but when I get my daily updates from the critical writing board, I feel terribly anxious that I haven't offered any crits (not that there's a minimum or anything) and that I haven't posted anything else since the third scene.

And the only thing that helps is to work. So off I go to do the shit I have to do to make this weekend work. Finish shopping for the party, bake and frost the cake, clean the house so our visitors from out of town can at least have a clean toilet to vomit in should the need arise, and still slap some lunch together for Aeryn.

Then I can work. And then, hopefully, this awful sense that I'm plodding slowly down the road while everyone else is catching up with the ice cream truck, so scared that there won't be any left for me by the time I get there. It's almost like preemptive grief. Or disappointment. Or something.

No rest for the wicked, right?

Right.

Will someone please tell me...

... how to write this fucking book without having the priest's POV? Because he's a real pain in the ass to write. The male and female protagonists are coming along nicely but writing Blackwell is like pulling teeth.

Damn it. It's a paranormal, for crap's sake. SURELY I can figure out a way to get enough hints in on what's going on without having to bore the fuck out of a reader in these scenes, because they're boring the SHIT out of me.

Maybe... I don't know, a telepathic connection? A little more information from her mother? A misplaced ribbon? Damned if I know. But there has got to be a way out of this; I'm terribly, awfully sick of slogging through these scenes.

Pardon the vent. It's late. However, now that I've put my brain on this path, it might take a few stumbling steps while I'm asleep. Once I wash the water bottles. And other stuff. Damn it.