Hello, writers. I finally sent off my manuscript, the sequel to Jinx, after much worrying and nail-biting: What if it’s not good enough?
I think this is why some writers never send things off in the first place. It's scary. A story in your own head is comfortable. It's yours. Putting it out there to be accepted or rejected by other people is, well, awful. It's no wonder some writers never get around to it.
That's why I'm always impressed by the people who are willing to do the weekly challenge on these diaries and post what they've written. That takes a lot of courage.
We're always putting ourselves out there-- when we show what we've written to someone else; when we send query letters to agents or manuscripts to editors; when what we've written is sitting on a library shelf, where it can be chosen or ignored.
For me at least, the fears that are involved in putting yourself out there pretty much break down to this:
What if people hate what I've written?
Nothing to worry about there-- they will! At least, some people will. Some just won't like it. Every bestseller has negative reviews on amazon, often along the lines of “Why can't I give this zero stars?!!”
To quote Dumbledore
Really, Hagrid, if you are holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a long time.
Of course, it's quite likely that other people will love what you've written. How will you find out, unless you give them a chance to read it?
What if someone else does better than me?
Again, no problem: They will! They already have, and they will in the future. But nobody else has written what you've written.
What if I do better than me?
That's probably my biggest fear right now. So you've written something some people have reacted well to. (And other people have not.) What if you can't do it again?
The answer to that is probably that you can't, in fact, do it again. You have to do something else.
But if you have enough chutzpah to post your off-the-cuff writing in the comments on WO, you probably have enough to send your stuff off to someone who might publish it. I know some of y'all have, and have been successful. But if you haven't... what are you waiting for?
Tonight’s challenge:
Below is a rather colorless passage. Rewrite it to reflect an emotion that someone is feeling. (It could be Ezra doing the feeling, or someone who's watching him, or someone who's listening from another room, or watching through a hidden camera or... well, you'll think of something.)
Ezra laid six pairs of socks out on the bed. He rolled them up, and put them in his suitcase. He folded three shirts, and added them. Did he need an extra pair of shoes? Probably. He should wrap them in something.
His toothbrush. He needed his toothbrush. Should he take toothpaste as well? He could probably buy some. It was probably better to leave the toothpaste. There was only one tube.
He looked around the room to see if he'd forgotten anything.
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