Insecurities

I’ve been holding my breath.

Biting my nails.

Sitting on the edge of my seat.

Waiting for my editor to read Reborn and give me a thumbs up.  Yeah, I know, you probably are thinking what most everyone thinks:  Please, you are an experienced writer.  You’ve written twenty something books, you don’t worry anymore.

But you and all those other people are wrong.  I still worry.  I still fret to the point it wakes me up at night.  I guess you could say in a way I’m a little like Della in this manner.  She acts all tough, nothing can hurt her, she’s not afraid of anything.  But down deep, she is afraid.  She’s afraid of a lot of stuff.  And in Reborn, in her point of view, you learn about Della’s own demons.  Things that keep her awake at night.

And like Della, most of the time I put on a good front, I pretend I’m a writer who knows what she’s doing.  Someone confident in her established career.  Someone wise beyond her years.  And I know, I’m not clueless, but dad-blast it if I still don’t deal with a whole boatload of insecurities every time I send a book in.  And then magically it’s as if a negative gremlin living inside my head, starts tossing out self-doubt by the crap loads.  Things like: What if this book really sucks?  What if you only thought it was interesting.  What if nobody, starting with your editor, cares about your plot?

But I have learned that sometimes admitting our fears, voicing them, can actually help us cope and help us quiet that dab-burn gremlin.  And sometimes hearing that other people deal with insecurities too can help us deal with them.  Perhaps, feeling insecure just makes us human.  Well, not just human, because all my supernaturals feel it, too.

I think, besides a few lucky people, most of us deal with some kind of insecurities.  And I’ll even venture to say that on occasion, that gremlin makes me try harder to improve myself.  So maybe it’s not all bad.  Maybe it’s somewhat normal.  However, as normal as it may be to be afraid to fail, we cannot let that fear of failure stop us from trying.

What are you afraid of trying? Do you have one of those gremlin living inside your head telling you that you might fail?

Update:  I heard from my editor and she likes Reborn.  Revisions are light.  So take that you negative gremlin!!!