As you can see from the title this is about some challenges you may face in writing, and since I’m writing about them, you are correct that I’ve fallen afoul of them and continue to an extent to be influenced by them. The first and biggest challenge is my own imagination.
What I mean by my imagination being a problem is, well, too much of it projecting all sorts of great things happening, and all sorts of bad things happening to me. Good things like recognition, respect, maybe even a best-seller list are things that would be wonderful to have happen. Similarly bad things like total rejection, ridicule, and humiliation because of doing a bad job on a story. These tend to spiral out of control for me, taking up lots of time daydreaming about, or dreading, the finished product. As a result I’m not working on the story.
Which is in line with something I read a long time ago. An author was asked if she thought about the fame she had received from a book she’d authored. Her response was : ‘I never thought about it. I wanted to write the story and didn’t pay attention to anything else.‘
Similarly, another problem is the beginning, which is my hardest section to write. As I’ve said in other discussions, I have a very hard time letting go of potential. A story is ALL potential until the first word is written. The first word leads into the first sentence, then the first paragraph, the first page, the first chapter, and so on through the book. But everything starts with that first word. I have trouble as I am enamored of the potential. The possibilities are numberless until the first word. Then like a sand in an hourglass, the idea is restricted to the words that build the story. It’s really not a restriction so much as the story telling itself, but to me I see it as lost potential.
The whole point of this discussion is very simple: Write your story and don’t worry about any ‘what if’ outside of the story. Write and don’t get distracted by the potential, focus on what you have control of, which is writing your story.