Writing Worry #1: My work is *insert explative*

A brilliant idea strikes you. A plot and/or character consumes you until you must write. You slave over every word and punctuation for weeks, months or even years. Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but eventually you will have to show someone what you've written. You will have to expose all your brilliance and short-comings to the criticism and judgement of family, friends, beta-readers, reviewers and/or a myriad of complete strangers who have no concept of how much you have struggled to bring that brilliant idea into reality.

It is a rare/confident/delusional person who has no qualms about sharing their writing with others. Yet it takes a certain degree of belief in those words to share them with anyone. Perhaps it is no surprise then that one of the worries that can paralyze me as a writer is that my writing is crap.

The sad truth is that, at this stage, it probably is. I have no illusions that my stories are perfect, far from it. Yet there is a perverse chain of cause and effect in writing. I write to share my stories. My stories have to reach a certain level of quality before I can share them with anyone. If I don't share my work with anyone then what is the point of writing?

Of course, I get a lot of pleasure out of creating a story, exploring characters and vicariously living their adventures. All this could be easily done inside my mind without ever putting fingers to a keyboard. Let's face it, writing is hard work. The ultimate reinforcement that I am doing something worthwhile often comes from that one reader who is as in love with my story as I am. The feeling of accomplishment in successfully telling a good story that moves a reader is what gets me through the long and arduous process of writing.

Yet that reinforcement is extremely rare. On a good day, I can write with my internal editor locked away in a dark closet. On a bad day, the worry that my writing is not worth anyone's time to read brings my writing to a stand-still.

Maybe my writing is crap. Maybe it is a diamond that needs polish to shine. One thing is certain. If I don't keep writing, my writing will never get any better.