Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to my current dilemma. I'm comparing my writing skills to those of published authors, and finding myself lacking. Again. While we were in America, I read a wonderful book called In the Company of Angels by David Farland, about the members of the Willie Handcart Company crossing the plains to Salt Lake City. At about the same time, I also read the update for the Monsters and Mormons anthology over at A Motley Vision, where it stated that they had enough space opera and were looking for other things. I skimmed through the list and two things caught my eye; the POV of a female protagonist, and steampunk. My mind went to work, inspired by these two sources, and before I knew it, I had some ideas. Then my great weakness kicked in, or one of them, anyway, and I realized that I didn't know what to do with these ideas. I knew there had to be a problem of some kind, and a resolution, and though I eventually came up with an idea for a monster, which I knew had to be defeated at the end, I couldn't come up with a way for my protagonist to do exactly that. Almost a month later, now, and I'm still no closer to knowing exactly how it should be done. In the meantime, I'm reading Dan Wells' blog about how he's going about writing his story for the M&M anthology, and he makes it look so easy. Wham, bam, he has a hook, a character, a resolution, everything he needs. Grrrr. He also understands people so much better than I do -- in fact, the more I think about it, the more I think my emotional quotient is somewhere on the left hand side of zero, and my characters will reflect that, scaring the readers away.
So sometimes, I think about quitting. But because of my experience with the piano, I know I'll always wonder if I could have improved if I'd just kept at it. So I haven't quit. Yet. But I also haven't written anything lately. I'm deathly afraid that if I stop writing for any length of time, that God will take away this talent, leaving me with absolutely nothing. But right now I also don't know how to reconcile this little talent with my huge weaknesses. Maybe I'm afraid to try and fail. Maybe I should write something anyway, no matter how weak the ending is.
To-morrow.
Update, 17 August. If only I weren't so blasted tired all the time!