I have been trying so hard to get this outline finished and – checking over since beginning this idea – I’ve realized it has been over a year as of now. It feels like I will never finish this book. I can’t help but wonder if its just an empty dream sometimes. I’d like to think it is good, but looking at authortube / booktube has soured me and my own experiences in non-fiction never yielded much in terms of results. As I continue to write it, the more generic, overly ambitious, and weak the general plot and story structure seem to become. To top it all off, I don’t intend to write this as a full story until much later, so I feel as if I’m just lying to myself sometimes.

I couldn’t help but look over reviews of recent self-published novels and last year’s failure of an ending for the manga, Attack on Titan. I’d like to think that it is better to try and flop than to not try, but sometimes I wonder due to how vicious some reviews can be. Sometimes, I do wonder if booktube is just a bunch of woke young adults and adults talking more about how a book didn’t fit into their standardized ideal than anything else that could be of merit. Admittedly, many Booktube books have been piss poor due to grammar issues, so that obviously doesn’t help matters. I just can’t help but wonder . . . isn’t this inevitably what will happen if I make a book and it ever becomes popular? But, the more I think of it, the more I realize it’ll just be a case of nobody caring about any book I write than anything else. So, while fame and backlash would suck, being ignored and found pointless seems to be much worse. I’m sure the vast majority of writers have experienced that.

My main issue as of now is that these ideas keep expanding, I keep buying more and more research material for this long-term project, and yet I just find it so difficult to write out and flesh out the outline. Even as I do flesh it out, the plot feels more and more like some Westerner writing a Shonen action-adventure-wannabe than anything else. Like, I’m already considering dividing this story into a split series which converge later throughout the story. I’m fairly sure that I’ll suffer carpel tunnel with the amount of writing I’m setting-up for myself at this pace of my own imagination getting the better of me. I wonder how Oda does it and how Tolkien did it. Like, their fingers must have become brittle from the crazy workload. The actual writing part is just so damn hard.

I’m hoping I can finish this outline soon. I guess perfectionist tendencies always circumvent my progress in what should be relatively simple tasks, but actually feel harder than unloading 6 feet palettes off of truck loading docks. I mean that with all sincerity. Even just coming-up with the ideas can be challenging. I feel it is best that I should suspect my own aspirations and any dream of wanting this to be a truly great story should be reduced to either “average” or “good” since it just becomes more and more trope-y as I lengthen and add to it. It just feels so unavoidable sometimes. Sadly enough, I realize now, I’ve probably just been producing something average and derivative. Perhaps people may like the aesthetic or one or two concepts, but I feel dismayed when looking over how other books just get trashed on and how people just enjoy trashing newcomer books as “problematic” for a variety of reasons. I wonder if this project is even worth it or if it’ll just be lost in a sea of forgettable books. I know that I should just do it because I intrinsically enjoy it despite everything that I’ve mentioned, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder . . . what the hell is the point? I do hope to make money off such projects and to pursue the life I want, but sometimes I just wonder how much of that is just vain and wishful thinking. Perhaps this all seems like overly dramatic nonsense, but sometimes . . . we all doubt and lose faith in our own capabilities. Just think of it like this: for every successful writer like JK Rowling or GRRM or Oda making groundbreaking work, there’s tens of millions who failed because nobody liked their story concepts and story arcs for a multitude of reasons. Putting one’s heart and soul into something for diminishing returns is just such a moodkiller. I can’t help but wonder what my future will be in that greater context.