June 29, 2007 3:03 PM

Entering My Own Billy Walsh Phase

My friends and family have been asking me how my next book is coming and what it's like to write a book in general, and the best I can come up with to describe what I feel like is by referencing the last episode of HBO's show Entourage and specifically the character Billy Walsh - the director of the fictional movie Medellin. If you don't watch Entourage, you won't fully get the reference, though it's not so unique. Billy is a perfectionist currently being driven utterly insane by his obsessing over the project, and I feel like I am entering my own Billy Walsh phase (sans chain smoking and obsessing over a bad Colombian actress). It is a phase where you begin losing any grasp over whether what you are writing is really great, or really subpar, and then you get paranoid that because you have lost this grasp, it means everything you are writing has to be worse than just subpar - it has to be really horrifically awful. It's not a good feeling, though at least because I've been through it once before, I am familiar with it and understand that it is a semi-temporary phase (hopefully) not (necessarily) related to any objective analysis of whether what I am writing is solid or terrible.

This is my psychological state on this Friday, and I'm sure the boxes around the house from unpacking aren't helping. Sorry if this was a little TMI.