I’m at that point in the current work in progress, tentatively titled Treadwell House – Sanctuary. It’s intended as a cozy mystery with paranormal or magic realism elements. I just passed 52,000 words. I project it to come in between 75K and 80K words, so I’m around the two-thirds point. And it seems like it’s always around this point in writing my books that it happens.

Some piece of my brain starts whispering to the rest that this is complete crap. Nonsense. Ridiculous. Nobody’s going to want to read this. It’s boring. It’s pointless. It’s just junk.

And maybe it is. An author is never the best judge of their own work.

But I know this feeling. It’s an old friend—or old enemy. I’m pretty sure it’s happened with every book I’ve written. Since I’ve scratched out more than two dozen of them now, it’s hard to say for sure, but I know that it has happened with at least the last five or six. It’s gotten to be predictable. I almost wait for it, though I dread it, too, because one of these times that voice might be right. It might just be crap.

Nonetheless, I’ll ignore the voice in my head and finish writing the book. I love the characters I’ve created, and I want to find out how the story ends as badly as I hope my readers will. (I do have a general idea, but I write to see how those will take shape in the reality of the novels.)

So far, the voices have been wrong. I’m going to hope that’s the case this time, too.