A Small Epiphany, But I'll Take It!

I need to know how to like my own writing again.

I mean, I do like my own writing. I read stuff I've written and I enjoy it. In all honesty, sometimes I forget I even wrote it and just get lost in the story. I'm not looking at it in terms of "this sentence structure is good" and "this dialogue didn't really work the way I thought it would." I'm just ... reading it. Like I would be reading a book I bought at the store.

And then I wonder why I can't do that again. If I could do it three or four or five or whatever years ago, I should be able to do it now.

And yet I can't.

I know that it's me. I'm gripping, and I know that I'm gripping. I totally recognize that what I'm writing doesn't really suck and that I don't really need to just delete everything and start over. As a matter of fact, I was reading over one of the rewrite projects I started and subsequently abandonded because it sucked out loud omg, and it really isn't that bad. I just ... don't like it.

I'm not happy with it. Any of it. Not just The Witch of November, but anything. I start something and I stop. That fanfic I posted a couple weeks ago? That was a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite. It took me something like three weeks to get it to where I wanted it, and I'm used to being able to whip short little one-shots like that out in a matter of days.

It is inordinately frustrating.

That all being said, however, I think I came up with a small epiphany for my prologue. I was having trouble hitting the correct emotional notes, partly because I felt it was too heavy to start out the book. Maybe "heavy" isn't the correct word, but the prologue was reading as more depressing than I really wanted it to.

So I came up with the idea of having Lillian totally into the idea of the seance instead of choosing to do one because it was a last resort. That way, the prologue reads are more anticipatory than desperate, which I think will help with the tone issue I was having.

At least, I hope so.

So, y'know, cross your fingers for me.

Oh, and one more quick thing: I've mentioned using the Social Security Administration website to get an idea on popular names in various time periods. I've also found a website that will tell you what day of the week any given date was.

(This all came about because I wanted Millie and Lillian's seance to be held on a Friday in August of 1877. I freely admit that I'm a dork.)