Like Haven, up until about two weeks ago it had been months since I’d opened my true WIP. I’d abandoned it in a moment of terror just before National in July, and when I wasn’t able to come home and feel excited about it, I started something new because — as Haven pointed out — writers write.

I had this horrible suspicion that if I didn’t write something, I would write nothing, and then eventually I wouldn’t think about writing at all, and one day I’d be one of Those People who might have been successful but never was — not for lack of talent, but for a myriad of reasons that she could never really put her finger on.

Which was really the heart of the matter. I didn’t have writer’s block. I knew the story(ies) I wanted to tell. I knew the characters and what they needed to go through to get to the HEA. I knew what it meant to write a manuscript, because I’d just finished one, so I didn’t stop writing because I wasn’t sure how this whole gig works. I knew there was agent and editor interest in my stories, because I’d just come back from National to a few new requests in my mailbox. And I knew I loved to write.

Why, then, didn’t I write?

Part of it was because for some reason, the long road to publication had suddenly seemed to double in length in my mind. I’m not sure why that was. I’d just reached the solid 2-year mark. Was that it? I subconsciously had hoped to sell before then? I’d just finished a manuscript I thought was pretty darn good. Was that it? I was afraid I couldn’t do it again?

I’d just dragged out the full rough draft of my next manuscript. Was that it? I now knew how much work needed go to into it to bring it even close to submittable? Or was it because two of my friends had just received enthusiastic offers of representation, and I wondered if anyone was ever going to love my stories as much as the Mavens?

Or was I paralyzed simply because I had never felt paralyzed before, and if it could come on so suddenly today, what was to stop it from happening a year or three from now when I’m under a tight deadline?

Maybe it was all those things. I knew I had to sit myself down and write something because I was inches from scaring my muse away forever. When the manuscript I chose to write became less of a pantsting amusement and more of an actual project, though, I shied away again. And when the Mavens descended on my condo earlier this month for a plotting party, I secretly feared we were wasting time plotting my novels.

But then I forced myself to make a decision — one I wasn’t sure I wanted to make. I loved, love love loved, my opening to my second novel. I think I loved it so much that I hated everything that came after it. Nothing could live up to it in voice or humor, and given that I wasn’t feeling particularly humorous [at the time I stopped writing it], I simply gave up.

So I trashed it.

And I started over.

And it worked. But I don’t think it worked because it was some fabulous, catch-all problem solver. I think everything else came to head at the same time: I wanted to write badly enough that I was willing to suffer for it.

Strangely, Carrie Ryan blogged about a very similiar situation and solution she went through not too long ago over at the Mavens’ blog. Have you ever tried it? (It being whatever germ of insight you got out of my ramble, of course!) I’d love to know how it went. I recently encouraged a friend to commit her ms to the Magical Mulch Pile and take up a new project. I think it took her at least a month to come to terms with it, and when she finally did I made it my personal mission in life to make sure she had something to replace it with. She sent out an email last night — a gleeful email, I might add — telling us she’d written almost 5 brand new pages of her WIP!

Delete — disappointment or darn good idea?