I’m writing a romantasy novella as an exercise to expand my range and force myself to write something I’m unused to, but every time I work on the redraft, I cannot see it being published how it is. Every time I type up the next chapter I’m just thinking about how I can change the story ‘just slightly’ to make it work the way I want it to.

It was, technically, an okay story on its own from the first draft, and I could have simply edited my words and called it complete, but I cannot for the life of me put something under my name on purpose that I consider mediocre (other people may, of course, but that’s different).

While, in the name of becoming an author and building up a backlog of published works, it would be the fastest route to simply write a completed story one after the other, I can’t stand the thought of having people read that and assume it’s all I’m capable of, not when I get so many ideas on how I can make it better, more interesting or complex, even if it makes the entire process take so much longer than I had initially planned.

It’s for the best.