The Final Sentence

I am so, so tired of doubt, of fear, of feeling as if I can’t write. I’ve had so much encouragement these past two weeks, it feels unreal. I posted First Steps on Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own, and people responded. I received kudos and reviews; readers bookmarked it. I felt good about it. There’s a dearth of How to Train Your Dragon stories featuring Stoick’s childhood. He’s an adult in the books and films, but my four-year-old Stoick reached people. The review stating he was recognizable as adult Stoick, but still a believable child touched my heart.

Isn’t that what I strive for, to reach people with my writing? It’s not a goal, it’s an expectation. I am charged with putting writing out there to be read. It sounds easy. I’m writing this sentence despite the little voice telling me I need to go back and do something about the amount of that and so appearing in this bit. Even knowing my inner critic is trying to obstruct me, I returned to edit something in the previous line. Putting sentence after sentence, word after word, is one of the few ways I can block the inner critic. The more I write without stopping, the more the voices fight to be heard. They go from suggesting I edit first, to stating my writing isn’t accomplishing squat, to outright raving about how useless I am. In this, they’re upping the ante. But this is another sentence, another statement, another word. It’s not my grammar or weak words or clarity that matters here, it’s getting the ideas down before they vanish. I’m sorely tempted to break off now and take my meds, a nice sensible thing that will break this flow and turn me away from finishing this rant. But I can feel myself hitting the end, and I give you, my reader, the final sentence.

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