Cowardice

I'm stuck.

I won't say blocked, because that's not the case, but I'm stuck. After thinking about it all day, I think I even know why it is that I'm stuck: I'm afraid to write this part of the book. What seemed like a perfectly reasonable premise when I started this project now feels radical, like it's going to make everyone who reads it angry. I don't honestly feel that this is the case, although there are people in the world who I'm quite sure want to be angry and will jump on any excuse to scream about something, but my internal political-correctness censor is screaming at me for what I have to write in order to get from the introduction piece of the book to the climax and finish.

I think I've been encouraging this behavior from that stupid censor in my head. I've been changing words from what I mean to some other nebulous thing in order for people not to think I'm talking about something real. In my fantasy novel.

Duh.

So, no progress on the book this weekend. Tomorrow I plan to go through the manuscript and tell my subconscious censor to go to hell. I'm changing those words back to what I mean. Hopefully that will shut her up long enough for me to get through this chapter, which I suspect will not be nearly as controversial as she insists it will.

In the meantime, I'm going to go over to Holly Lisle's site and reread her article about exactly this situation. Over and over and over again. Until it sticks.

On a side note, the site design is finished; I'm now working on the code to get it to work on Blogger. Dear Google: It would have been incredibly helpful if you had included ANY documentation on the coding involved. Unfortunately, that happy circumstance is not the case, so it's trial and error which is incredibly time-consuming. Within another week or so, my beautiful (in my oh-so-humble opinion anyway) design will show up on the blog. Stay tuned!