Do you trust me?

Or better yet, do I trust myself?  As I started my next round of revisions I have been overcome with indecision and doubt.  I’m waffling and confused and frozen by paranoia.  I’ve seen other authors talk about this state and I’ll admit I wasn’t very understanding. “Pffft,” I thought, “get over yourself.  Just do something.  It doesn’t matter what.”  Now I’m in the same boat. 

I’m having trouble with my second chapter. I’ve rewritten, tweaked, added scenes, taken scenes out, you know the drill.  And still, it’s not quite right.  The frustration and hopelessness was really getting to me until I read Behler Blog this morning.  Now let me say I think I started my book in the right place.  I’ve reworked my first chapter to try to start it when the story begins.  But in all that work I never once reworked my second chapter to make sure it matched the updated first one.  All this time I’ve been concentrating on how best to give the reader the info and characters I have in the second chapter when all along the question should have been am I giving them the right information.  The question I asked myself after reading Behler Blog was, “Is my second chapter heading down the same path the first chapter started us on.” 

Now we’re getting somewhere.   Just this simple little change in how I view the chapter has helped clear my mind.  In all honesty, as soon as I start pulling the chapter apart the confusion will probably return, but now I have a standard to work towards, a beacon leading me on. 

I set a goal this month to trust myself in my writing, to go for what I think is best without wondering if it fits “the rules”.  That’s what good critique groups are for, to tell me if it’s working or not.  For now I’m going to trust this new direction and we’ll see where it ends up.