There’s something I like to call the Forever Doubts—that lingering creeping feeling that nothing is ever right. That nothing is ever going to be perfect. It leads to questions, it leads to inaction and it leads to stagnation.

The muse is the type of mystical thing that produces wonderful pieces of works. It’s when we are at our best as writers when the words simply flow and the scenes just seem to come to life. When our fingers glide over the keys and everything we touch is gold. We save those moments and call them published works; the types of things we show to mom, dad and all of our writing friends.

Yet there’s a dark side to that all writers know and that is the Forever Doubt because it never really goes away for as long as we call ourselves writers. We worry that the right word will never come, that our book will never be finished —that we simply aren’t good enough to do this at all.

For every easy scene, for every finished story there are those moments when the words just trickle out, unseemly and anemic; when you simply hold that goddamn delete key after every paragraph you write. That’s when you think about shutting down the computer and walk away like this time it’s forever That is the Forever Doubt; as much a fabric of our writers life as the muse itself.It’s foolish to fight it or wish for it to go away. Those that  do never really get started in the first place. Those people are the front runners, the ones that write when it strikes their fancy.

No person makes a sustainable career out of  writing waiting to “simply feel like it.”

True writers own the Forever Doubt. They stare it in the face and peck out every unsightly word and wear out that delete key until they have to replace it with another one. Those are the people that own the moment and have swagger to accept every failed word, paragraph and story they ever produced. That type of person isn’t just unafraid to produce an utter piece of shit, but revels in all its crappy glory because they know that beneath the heaping pile is the muse and when she comes success is sure to follow.