Stuck? Scared? Stuck, therefore Scared? Scared, therefore Stuck? Crap.

I'm stuck. Or maybe I'm scared (maybe you got this from the title). At any rate, I'm definitely intimidated. I'm writing a new story, well, actually I've got about three on the stove right now. And they're all stuck in the same spot. Arg. So frustrating. All three of them are just out of my reach, like when you're going after that bowl that you don't use often but is gorgeous and sits atop your kitchen cabinets, and your fingertips keep brushing the rim, but you can't quite grab it. Of course, maybe someone else would do the sensible thing, get a stepladder and calmly retrieve the bowl. But not me. That would make sense, indicate logic and proactive problem-solving. What I usually do is keep jumping, keep brushing it with my fingertips until it wobbles and falls, and then hope that I can catch it before it shatters and/or kills me. Right now, I feel like any one of these stories could tumble, shatter and/or kill me in the process.

The problem is, I have to make decisions. Usually when I am writing and it is decision time, if I don't know what to do I take a deep breath (wait a few days, a few weeks, whine about it to friends like jessie and amber), then jump in like it's a pool that I know is really friggin' cold, come up gasping, and start doggy-paddling. That has been a pretty good system. But this time, not to belabor the pool metaphor, but I am in way over my head. I need to make decisions, but have no basis from which to make them. I feel like I know just enough about writing to get myself in trouble. You know how sometimes, the more you learn about something, the more difficult it gets? I try not to make writing to much of a conscious process in terms of mechanics, at least until a certain time, after which I become painfully meticulous.

But this is about changes in time and space more than anything else, and I'm not sure what to do. I know that any changes I make don't have to be permanent, I have saved a copy as an alternate version that I can mess with, and still have the previous draft to go back to if I have to trash my efforts. But I still can't do it. I can't make the changes. There's this part of me that knows that even though the changes on the paper aren't permanent, if I change the story, the change in the way I see it will be permanent. I won't be able to see it the way I saw it before. And that scares the crap out of me.

And so I blog, and I make fruit salad, and I weed my garden and check the mail, and paint furniture and make pants. But the whole time, in the back of my head, in the back of my throat, there is panic. I tiptoe around it, dance up to it to see if it is still there, and retreat quickly when I find that it is, that as soon as I approach it the feeling in my throat slides down into my chest. So I tiptoe away and force it back where it was, knowing that I should meet it head on, but lacking the strength. What a wuss.