Fear, Insecurity & Doubt: Welcome to this Writer’s Life

I didn’t post last week because I was busy making final edits to “Damaged Angels,” my Bold Strokes Books October release. It was the last look before the production train starts so you better believe I: READ. EVERY. LAST. WORD. Sometimes twice. It was an odd sensation---it’s the first time I’ve read the entire book from start to finish in quite some time. I discovered I am happy with it. Hopefully readers will be too, but we shall see.

Almost all of the stories were inspired by real people (read ex-boyfriends) or events. I didn’t quite expect to experience the rush of emotions I did on rereading. One passage in particular, in which a young man calls 911 after waking to find his boyfriend has attempted suicide and slipped into a coma while he slept beside him. The description of that call took me back to the actual experience, back to that actual boy. The fear, the feeling of being utterly alone at 3 a.m. with a near corpse came back with such unexpected intensity, I felt faint. (In case you’re wondering, he lived; we broke up.)

Once I could breathe again, I wondered what readers would think: would the story ring true? Would they feel that panic, that fear? Had I gotten it right? Insecurity and self-doubt aren’t emotions I usually suffer from but I find myself in a constant state of agitation, of fear that I suck as a writer.

I’ve decided that writers pass through four stages regularly:

1. Can I write this story? I can’t write this story…
2. I wrote a story, a book. Will anyone publish it?
3. I got a book published! Will anyone read it? No one will read it.
4. Oh, look at my Amazon rating. Cool. Wait what exactly does that ranking mean?

I seem to be stuck firmly in Stage 3. Unless I think about “What Binds Us” in which case, I am stuck at Stage 4. I sigh. I am a mess. I try to think of other things, do other things: I walk the dogs, lavish attention on the neglected Mister, work on my next book but still the fear, the nagging doubt persists.

I reread the stories in “Damaged Angels” and marked some passages that make me proud to say I wrote this. I’ve compiled some below. Maybe they suck. Maybe they don’t. I only know that they restore my faith in myself, in my ability to write, to tell a story, to share an experience. For now, tonight, that is enough. Tomorrow, however, is another story.

“Beyond the window, the white morning stretches, like my love for him: silent, eternal, inescapable as a tomb.”

“Her words, serfs that had once done my bidding—cajoling me out of a mood, entertaining me, comforting my distress—now rose up against me, their feudal lord. An army of words, taking up arms, striking down the nation of me.”

“Dawn breaks across the city. The city is about to awaken. Soon, it will become the domain of gray-suited businessmen with elephant-hide briefcases and peptic ulcers and mink-coated old ladies with blue blood and black nurses.”

“His erection precedes him, curving slightly toward the heavens, a proud ebony bird in gentle determined flight.”

“Val stared into the adored perfect face—a Madison Avenue promise of unlimited wealth, endless love, immortality.”