Nin and Foster's Road to ...

Feeling Naked!

Posted by Melina and Denise , Friday, March 8, 2013 8:19 AM

I received an email from the editor I will be working with to tell me that she will be starting on it during the week of March 18th. Time frame! Now I know exactly when the worst of the terror will set in.

I feel like a wimp. Unless it involves speaking in front of people, which is shocking as I have such a big mouth, I don't generally feel like I am going to vomit at the thought of doing something. I spend most of my life without barfy feelings. But the thought of having someone else, a total stranger, read something I have worked on for so long and critique it is horrifying. It is also necessary.

Luckily, I can handle criticism where writing is concerned. It is possibly the only area in which I have any confidence. This just confuses me that much more; why am I so frightened?

I think the bottom line is that I can handle general criticism, but what if she comes back and says "You have been deluding yourself and you have no talent and you can never be a writer go whistle!" OK, maybe not the last part, but you get my drift. I've always had great feedback on my work, but that was mostly from people who are a little biased IE. friends and family. And it was also about short pieces I wrote. Writing a novel is a totally different story, which I learned with every page I completed.

I try to focus on this as a learning process, but I can't lie and pretend that I am not scared and feeling more than a little exposed. What keeps me sane is that I am also pretty darned proud of myself for taking this step in spite of the vomity feelings.

With all of this talk of writing, I should probably link to a few stories I have had published to give an idea of what I have done. Here they are: Him, The Warning, Grandfather's Day.

I am going to sip my ginger tea to settle my tum tum and wait out the month.