When You’ve Fumbled the Goddamn Ball

“Abandoned airplane wreckage by a mountain landscape” by Asa Rodger on Unsplash

So, in the computer shuffle during the last week, I’ve had a hard time coming back to my novel, a work-in-progress that I currently should be outlining.

I lost some of my files in the transfer. Nothing too serious or dire — my backups are usually very good at preventing this kind of loss — but, for whatever reason, about the last five days of plotting notes just evaporated into thin air.

It’s not that huge of a loss. Maybe 2,000 words at most. And I remember most of what I wrote, as well as some things that I could tidy up, story elements that have changed in the interim.

But it’s been hard for me to get back into writing.

Part of me is torn between redoing the work or picking up where I left off. There’s something unappealing about going back and redoing work I’ve just done in the last week, but it’s good to have those notes. And there’s a part of me that doesn’t like knowing that I should have that information there, but was too lazy or whatever to go back and re-do it.

This shouldn’t be hard. This shouldn’t be a difficult thing. But my brain likes to latch onto any excuse to not write, and, boy howdy, if this isn’t a perfect little excuse.

Usually, I play the role of the encourager. I encourage writers who’ve gotten stuck or who feel behind or have had…