Stats and self-sabotage

Total word count: a notch over 56,000
Today's word count: a little difficult to judge because there was a lot of splicing and moving things around, but probably only about 500. LOML and I are taking a long weekend.
Cups of coffee: four, and one cup of tea
What's playing: currently, a Gilmore Girls DVD

I have been thinking about self-sabotage lately. Because, well, it's something I do. It's not deliberate, but it seems that whenever I'm on the brink of success I do something to negate it. For example:
1) I start writing articles for a magazine. It's going well. I start putting ideas forward for features, and even have the opportunity to establish a reviews page. Then I suddenly lose interest, decide that I don't want to pursue it, and drop out.
2) I send a synopsis and query letter to an agent. She says she might be interested, but it needs to go through her manuscript assessor first. This will cost a fairly large amount of money which, however (and rarely for me), I have. I say I'll think about it, then never get in touch with either of them again.

There are many more examples, and they're not all in the realm of writing, but it is something I tend to do. Something else I tend to do is hand in work with only a cursory edit and rewrite (the Kamikaze approach), when I know that if I only put some time aside to look through it properly I could raise my grade. I'm one of those annoying people who get good grades anyway, but it's still not a good habit. I got better at it last year during the publishing course, because I was more aware of it.

I really hope I can do this successfully. I feel like the book is going well, and I feel like it's going to be really good when it's finished, and that it has a good chance of getting published. I really don't want to screw it up.

Okay, enough over-thinking. I've got into a good habit of switching off the neurotic and self-critical parts of myself while working. It's good to switch them back on occasionally ... clear the crazy pipes, as it were ... but it's time for them to go off again.

(ping).

(that was meant to be the sound of them going off).