I’m going to start out by saying that, even though it’s been over a year since I started writing Nerdgasm, I’ve never lost my excitement for it. I was talking to my pal, Becca Patterson, about it last night on a walk after our weekly write-in. (Yes, we’re still doing this, after more than two years of epicly awesome friendship!)

Normally, I bounce around a lot from one project to another. Normally, I have ten different projects going at any one time, and I spend time on all of those inside a week. Normally, I can’t concentrate on any one project for more than a day or two, often while switching back and forth between a few different ones each day anyway because a random idea for one of them pops up on me.

But with Nerdgasm, that’s hardly been the case. And yet it has been the case. There were times where I had to distract myself from the story so that I could cleanse my thoughts and clarify ideas.

At the beginning of March, I’d set the goal of having the first draft completed. But the month of March was a bit of an asshole to me, and I missed that deadline. I couldn’t concentrate on it. I’d stare at the blank page, or I’d stare at the scene, and not know where to start.

I’ve done a lot of brainstorming, and scenes that were previously completely unwritten now have goals and a reason to exist. Again. (In case you’re wondering, Becca thinks “again” is the single funniest word in the English language. I think I agree.)

Fortunately, we’re out of March now. I may have missed my goal deadline, but it won’t be long before this first draft is complete. I have a few more scenes I want to beef up. But then again, they might not need any more meat on their spindly bones than already exists. I will have this draft done. And then I’ll be begging my crit partners for critiques. Because that’s how this process works.

But here’s the thing. All this sounds annoying and frustrating and anger-inducing. It is. And none of it matters because I’m still excited about this project. Nerdgasm came to me on a whim, based off of one of Misty Carlisle’s characters. It was going to be a short story, but Judy and Max had so much more to tell. It pissed me off. But I was excited about their story.

Then came a world-change for this geeky couple. And as frustrating as it was switching out all references of the original world to references to the new world, I was still excited.

I still find occasional references when I do read-throughs of scenes before I buckle down and work on them. But I’m still excited about Nerdgasm.

And even with my publication date of Black Friday looming ever closer, and the panic that I won’t finish in time sets in, I’m still excited. It’s kept me pushing to finish this story. It’s kept me more focused on this story than any other story I’ve ever written. It’s not a super long story, but it’s long enough to tell the story it’s supposed to tell. And I’m still excited about it.

All the other projects that I keep abandoning and going back to? Am I really that excited about them? I don’t know. Even the Series that got Away doesn’t feel as exciting as it used to. But maybe that’s because it exploded and got too big, and the task of finishing/revising/editing all those stories got to be too much for me to handle, mentally.

Or it’s because it’s just a massive undertaking, and it’s going to take a while, and I lack the motivation at the moment to get going on it again. Whatever the reasoning, I’m just not that excited about it right now. Will I ever be again? I don’t know. It could be that I’m just more excited about Nerdgasm right now, and that’s what’s taking up all my focus.

I guess what I’m trying to say is… work on what you’re excited about working on. If you’re not excited about it… will your readers be excited?