Help: Give me permission to write badly. Really, really badly.
I’m 37% into my contemporary fantasy romance novel. The magic is gone. I’ve lost contact with the Feelings I wanted to give the reader, the story’s true reason for being. I’m bogged down in questions like, “Why isn’t this scene working as a pinch point?” and “Will the tension really rise over act two as I have planned it?” and “Do I really need all this external fantasy plot if what I truly want is for my FMC to bring my MMC coffee when he’s tired?” (Yes to that last one, at least if I ever want someone to read it when she finally brings him coffee.) I’m getting wildly perfectionistic and inhibited.
So please. Someone tell me in graphic, visceral, absurd terms just how bad my first draft is allowed to be.