Avalanche...!!

A possible diagnosis for my disfunctional thought patterns from writer Samuel Park, guest blogging on Anne R. Allen's blog:

6.     Avoid Avalanche Thinking

...[W]e’re writers, we have big imaginations, and it’s hard to resist avalanche thinking: “Agent X doesn’t want my manuscript, which probably means that Agent Y won’t either, and no agent will ever want me, and that’s because I have no talent, and if I have no talent, then I’ll never sell a book, and if I never sell a book no one will ever love me, and no one will ever love me then daddy was right when he called me a loser, and so on and so on.”

Read more tips for the emotional self care of writers here.

So I'm an avalanche thinker. But avalanches are at least 500% more impressive than depressive spirals, am I right? They look a lot better in HD...

Why I never finish anything

Just a very quick musing—in thinking about what to write for Week Five’s challenge, the following things occurred to me just now:

• I could use the same characters from Week Three’s challenge.
• Maybe he’s a single dad? Or a stay-at-home dad, and his wife is away on business a lot?
• Maybe they’re recently separated, and he’s in the position of being a primary caregiver for the first time in his life?
• Why did they separate?
• Oh, this could be a whole book. A meditative literary fiction thing where the protagonist is grappling with a lot of new things at once, trying to maintain normalcy even while he questions everything that brought him to where he is now.
• But wait—then I would always have to write books like that. That would be exhausting.
• ...I probably should write about something else this week.

I recognize that this is a disfunctional thinking pattern, but it’s my disfunctional thinking pattern, okay?

Anyway, there’s something here and I’m interested to find out what, so as much as possible I’m going to try focusing just on exploring this week’s challenge and not allow myself to think even a chapter past that. That way lies darkness.