113: Moments of Doubt
7/4/2020
Is my Batu dead?
I don’t know. It’s been over three years since I’ve touched it, so at the very least it’s in a coma. I rarely even think about it anymore. I’m always working on one writing project or another, so I’d like to think my craftsmanship is at least being exercised. Though most of it was fan fiction or fan-rewrites that I used simply to practice the mechanics of storytelling. All of it now deleted and gone forever.
Feels like a waste of time, but then so does all my Batu work at this point. Years and countless hours spent trying to give birth to something I could call my own. And now it’s looking like it will never happen, making it all a waste of time.
Problem is my lack of interest in finishing it is based on my feeling that it would be a waste of time to finish it as well. I’ve lost faith in it. It will be crap… I want to say, “no matter what I do,” but I don’t really believe that. I believe it IS salvageable. I just don’t know what it needs or how to do it.
My brain says that I’m missing a strong premise, which renders the work pointless. But my heart/gut says it’s more than that. I’m missing my audience. There’s not one person in this world that I know would appreciate my work, and deep down I don’t care what people I’ve never met think about it. And being my own audience doesn’t motivate me either, because my personal appetite for Batu has been satiated for a long time now. I’d be curious to read the finished work if I could wave a magic wand and have it done instantly, but to be honest, I suspect it would bore me and would be a struggle for even me to get through it.
Let alone having to write the damn thing.
That sounds to me that it’s dead. And yet, I still hold out a little hope that I’ll have an idea – or a series of ideas – that might bring it back to life and get it across the finish line.
I’d like to get it finished, but not simply for the sake of finishing – like some kind of masochistic work ethic, or my dad’s voice whispering in my ear that I never finish anything. I need to be motivated by a goal that actually matters. I need to have faith that the end result will be worth the effort. And right now, I have absolutely no faith in that at all.
So, I’m waiting.
Present-Day Reflection
9/15/2026
Rereading this entry is depressing, even six years later when I know it’s all going to work out to be better than I ever thought it would. The first book, Wings of Providence, is finished and about to launch in a couple weeks. I feel really good about how it turned out. And my Author’s Website is far better than I ever imagined it would be.
All that being said, rereading the fourth of July entry from 2020 really unsettles me because I still have those same doubts and frustrations about where I’m at now. Because the physical edition is an epic 600-page volume, the Print-on-Demand costs are pushing it to $24.99 just to break even. While it's built to be a collector's item for the bookshelf, the $6.99 eBook is where the core reading experience lives.
There just aren’t enough hours in a day, and the administrative side of self-publishing is taking its toll on me, overwhelming me with a never-ending onslaught of things I need to do that I have no idea how to do. Having to learn as I go, researching every detail of the process. Setting deadlines for myself is a fool’s errand when I have no familiarity with the landscape ahead of me. Technical hurdles I’ve never heard of and could never have anticipated keep cropping up to block my every move.
I’m an idealist by nature, and my perfectionism is working against me. I can’t launch my book the way it should be. I simply don’t have the expertise or the time. I feel like if I don’t push to get it out now, I never will. So, I’m sticking with my October 1st deadline, no matter what.
Part of me doesn’t want to include this entry in my online author’s journal. It feels like bad marketing to admit that I’d given up on my own work for three years, and that even I wouldn’t want to read the finished product. But I’ve come to believe that transparency is key, and that if I can’t live authentically then there’s no point to living at all. Besides, I obviously don’t feel that way anymore about my work, having reread it over and over from beginning to end through the editing process, and am looking forward to reading it yet again when I get the print version on my bookshelf.
The primary purpose behind this entry is to encourage others who may have felt that they’ve hit similar creative walls. I’m hoping it serves as a reminder to keep pushing. October 1st is fast approaching – grab the eBook on launch day or join my newsletter to see where the rest of this journey will takes us.
