1. I forgot to do this one thing in Chapter 20.
2. The ending could be done in a completely different way.
3. It’s too goofy.
4. It’s not funny.
5. It’s not funny enough.
6. The serious parts are seriously inane.
7. My main character doesn’t have an arc.
8. My beta reader hates it.
9. My beta reader is trying to find a kind way to tell me she hates it.
10. Every day that passes since my beta reader got it is another day that proves she didn’t stay up all night reading it because she loved it so much.
11. I should start something new.
12. I should go back to something I abandoned.
13. I should pick a short piece of fiction to work on so I can abandon it when the new thing comes back and requires major rethinking.
14. I have too many straight white characters.
15. The non-straight, white characters are horrible representations and I should be ashamed of myself.
16. I forgot to change this one thing somewhere in the book and I don’t know where it is.
17. It’s too long.
18. It’s way too long.
19. I can’t do another rewrite.
20. I can’t do another book.
21. I can’t do another short story.
22. I can’t even finish this thoug
23. Everyone who says they like it is just smiling at me because they think I’m a nice person.
24. Only one person has really said they liked it.
25. It’s not over the top enough.
26. It’s over the top enough but only in clichéd ways.
27. My characters are clichés.
28. The tone is uneven.
29. With everything going on in the world, I decided to write about this?
30. Someone else wrote this exact book and is now in the publishing process already.
31. I told someone my premise and they went home and dashed out something that rips it off and that’ll be out before my book can even leave the starting gate.
32. My timeline is wrong.
33. My agent is only with me out of pity.
34. My agent only picked me up because she’s a friend of a friend.
35. No one ever really wants to know what I’m working on, it’s just a politesse.
36. Because whatever I’m working on is totally interesting only to me.
37. I’m not really a writer.
38. Or at least, I’m not a writer who has any stories anyone wants to hear.
39. I’m in the wrong genre.
40. It’s my fault that I don’t like literary fiction, because I’m a hack.
41. Someone will see themselves in one of my characters and sue me.
42. I’ve used a piece of jargon badly in the story and everyone will decide I’m a fraud.
43. I am a fraud.
44. I am imposter of an actual writer.
45. I keep going back to the same themes and rewriting them with different characters.
46. I am unfit to give other people writing advice because I am never going to figure this out alone.
47. Writing has been the one consistent thing that gives me pleasure since I was 8 and I’m still terrible at it.
48. Without writing, I’m just like everyone else in the world.
49. The book is bad, so bad no one will work with me again.
50. I’m going to have to do another rewrite.

xo,
R