The antidote to doubt.

I didn't write for 3 days for some reason. Pretty rare for me to skip even a day. But I think putting up "The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders" on Amazon was stressful in ways I didn't foresee.

I finally got out to the Badlands and walked my 5 mile route and the ideas just kept on coming. I wrote a short chapter of "Deep Sea Rising" that I really like. The ending also popped into my mind and it felt right.

When I write a scene that surprises me and pleases me, all doubts about writing disappear. Or rather, they don't matter. They are beside the point. The writing is its own reward and I take great satisfaction out of telling these stories to myself, seeing them come alive.

What happens after that isn't up to me.

TMPDGM's is the first book where I could see day to day (hour to hour) response to my book, and it was pretty disappointing for a couple of days. So I was shaking that off.

Then, after I'd resolved those doubts by writing a good scene, I came home to finally see some results. #512 in Horror, out of 83,000.  #12 in the last 30 days. The time lag is longer than I expected. A couple of days, apparently.

I'm guessing that will be my high water mark, but at least it was there for a day or so.

I have two more small chapters worked out, and then the big two final chapters. Then the epilogue.

The break probably helped clarify the sequence of chapters for me, so it probably didn't hurt.

It's just that not writing let the doubts creep in.

Back to writing for the next few days, finish "Deep Sea Rising" then dive into the rewrite of "The Darkness You Fear."