"Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." - Colette

I experience a lot of doubt about my writing, and I'm sure I'm not unique in that. But usually when I finish a first draft, I know whether I'm happy with it or not, and whether I want other people to read it or not. Whenever I finish anything with Ethan Banning in, my first thought is always, "oh man, I need to give this to someone else right now." I feel the same about THE WOLF WITCH - I'm really excited for people to read it and see what they think, because I loved writing it so much.

But every now and then, the inner critic just assails me and leaves me confounded as to what I've actually written and why. When I finished the first draft of Night Breed, Urban Wolf 3, my first impulse was to delete the whole file and start over, because I was so deeply unsure as to whether it was good or not. I still am. I've spent a lot of time this week wondering if it's too late to tell my editor to pretend I never sent it to him, because it's just...not right and I don't know how to fix it. Maybe that will pass when I start rewrites, but I feel like it won't.

And I'm having the same thing with my naga novella, Snakebite. Like, I'm nearly finished and I genuinely don't know if I like it. I desperately wanted to write this story, but now it's nearly over, I feel like I've wasted the past two weeks. The ending feels contrived, the relationship lukewarm. I don't even like any of my characters' names. The heroine has been Madison, Avery, and now Coral, and I don't feel like any of them are right. The hero has had two name changes. The plot feels tepid. I kinda like some of what I've written, but I don't think I like any of it enough to try to publish it. And frankly I don't know if I like any of it enough to try to salvage it. I have to finish it now, because I'm soclose, but once it's done, I think it's being consigned to the "do not want" folder on my laptop.

I don't want to push stories I'm not passionate about out into the reading world, because I think lack of passion will always show, no matter how polished our product might be. I've no idea why I felt such a strong urge to finish this story after a year of ignoring it, but now I'm done, I think I know why I abandoned it originally. It's not a story I needed to write and it's not populated with characters I need to share. And for me, that's my main motivation in writing - the desire to share something I love with other people. If I don't feel that desire, I can't expect a reader to either.

*If it helps, you can picture me and my inner critic as giant radioactive monsters for the purposes of this blog. I am.