Let’s start by talking about how I’m feeling. Yesterday afternoon, one of the girls from HR called me to say, “I’m sending an email to your boss that is about you and confidential, so please do not read it.”

I knew it was about my promotion, but I still stressed out about it for three hours. My boss finally came back and told me how he was working out details with HR about the promotion, and in the end HR was going to formally tell me — we don’t know why they wouldn’t let my boss do it. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to my boss or me, but HR doesn’t normally make much sense.

This morning, I saw the HR chick on the escalator and she said, “Hey, I have to talk to you today. I’ll call you!” And she made that phone-call-signal with her hand to her ear. I knew it was about the promotion, and I know I already have it, but fifteen minutes later the stress-induced migraine came on anyway — the kind that screws up your vision for the next 45 minutes.

It’s two grande coffees and four Advils later (2:00pm) and she still hasn’t called. And I know she hasn’t forgotten about me, because she was up at my desk around 11:00am chatting with me about hairstyles and the pants she’s wearing and the necklace she bought to go with the pants, and one or two work-related topics.

An hour after she left, I succumbed to the curiosity and stress and tried to open the email she had sent about me, but it is encrypted so I can’t read it unless I go to my boss’ computer to read it. Which I could, but I won’t.

I don’t know why I’m stressing out about this.

In the meantime, I’m still trying to finish up one of the chapters that I’ve been working on for the WOW/LoO related guild story.

It was a good idea to start with. The whole point was to practice my writing, by just forcing myself to pound out whatever came to mind quickly, in short, stupid chapters. No plotting, no planning, just writing.

I’m on chapter three, and I’ve been staring at it for nearly 3 weeks now. It’s not going the way I planned - and that’s where I’ve gone astray, I think, because the point wasn’t to plan. It was to write something funny and stupid. Unfortunately this is not the way chapter 3 has gone at all. It turned out a bit more serious than I wanted it to be, because it’s developing a plot. It’s also developing the characters and some of the character interactions, but it’s gotten longer than I wanted, and more serious than I wanted.

No, that’s not correct either. It is what I envisioned, and maybe that’s what is bugging me. But it’s longer and now I’m feeling the pressure to put out another chapter that is as good as the last one. And it’s different than the chapter 2, which was totally different from chapter 1.

I’m afraid of this sucking.

Now I’m about two and a half weeks late in getting this thing out, and I’m paranoid about the writing itself sucking. Now I stare at the page, the sentences that I want to put down are running through my head, but I can’t force them out. I can even envision the words in my head - I know exactly what sentences I need to type out, but I’m so afraid of it sounding like the writing of a second grader that I can’t force myself to type. So I sit and stare at the page for an hour, loathing the chapter itself. And there’s some good stuff in there, I’m totally happy with a lot of the content because I need it for other chapters later, I just can’t continue because of stress and worry and self-loathing. I’m sick of looking at this chapter and I just need it to end.

Meanwhile, my head continues to run ahead and cook up the story. Now I have enough information in my head for a few chapters, but I can’t get past chapter 3 because I’m too worried about it sounding like garbage.

Does this flow? Are the sentences too basic? Do I suck with the language and grammar? Maybe my style is horrible! I don’t know. I wanted these chapters to be no more than 5 or 6 pages, but I’m already on page 7 (3000 words) and I am worried that it’s too long.

I hate this chapter. I want it to die.