Postponing

I'm eager to begin working on my novel, but also afraid that I'll end up empty of ideas.

This happens to me a lot, with many things. The perfect ideal I have in my mind rarely is the same thing I get once I do something about it. Shoes don't shine as well as I think they should, dinners don't come out as planned, construction projects fail to be square and true, things like that.

Before I do my writing (or whatever), I haven't failed. After I start something, I can screw it up. One of the ways I handle this tendency -- and it's not a good one -- is to avoid starting. As long as I haven't tried to make my dreams real, they're still glorious and perfect.

I guess it's a fear of failure thing.

Anyway, so instead of writing to see what emerges, I put it off, keeping it in that "possibly wonderful" state as long as I can.


Oh, yeah...

Why have the sidebar things moved to the bottom of the page? They show up on the right when I look at the comments, but languish at the bottom of the page when I view the site. and I finally got around to looking at all the comments...wow. You guys noticed!