Depression in June

It's June, and in the Northern Hemisphere, that means it's summer and lovely. In other words, there's no accounting for the depression I've felt over the past few days.

Right now, I'm doing the final edits (third or fourth round) on books that will appear in August, September, October, November, and December... which made me ask myself...

Am I borrowing Winter depression because I'm writing about books set in winter?!

What an odd possibility.

My writing partner suggested something more prosaic. Since the end of June is a deadline for me to finish the final drafts on all these books, which have gone through more rounds of editing than I planned, perhaps I'm simply feeling the stress of trying meet my deadline.

I am definitely getting to that point in the writing process where I'm sick of these projects, and find it hard to find anything good at all in my work. I read each book and feel it's the worst trash ever and a spiral of dark thoughts begin, "The Beta readers will hate it, the readers will hate it, no one will want to read it, it won't sell and I'll have wasted two years of hard work on something worthless."

Yeah, I know how to kick myself when I'm down.

The logical part of my mind knows that this is a predictable stage of writing that I go through with literally every book I've ever written. It has no relation to how well a book does later on either. It doesn't even reflect how much I like a book later. 

I don't know what it is about Writer Brain, or maybe it's just my brain, that drags me through this shit. Sigh.

Despite my worry that my new series is a horrible disaster, I'm still already planning the next series set in the same universe. And, ironically, writing new scenes in a new series always cheers me up.

Which again shows that my Depression thoughts make no sense.

But there you.

I shared this not for pity but just in case you get depressed for no reason, hate on your work, hate on your life, feel bereft and desolate, despite everything in life seeming objectively fine. (And if you have real problems, it's ten times worse.) 

You're not alone in that inexplicable darkness. It happens to me too. 

That's all I'm saying. Hang in there.