Insecure Writer’s Support Group

Here I am, once again, talking about my insecurities.

And ironically, it’s when I have them on display. See, I didn’t start out writing novellas. I started with novels. And my baby, The Haven, was that story. The one people tell you to write.

“Write the books you want to read!”

And I did. I loved it, too. It’s very unconventional. I use classic tropes in modern ways, and tie the whole thing together with snark and unironic, straight up heroism. I call it Epic Urban Fantasy.

But it means I have vampires, magic weapons, celibate priests, dimension hopping demons, magical fairy lands, and rock bands all jammed up together on a Hero’s Journey.

It’s not everybody’s cup of tea.

Unfortunately, an author whom I admired took it upon themselves to convince me it was crap, as opposed to a piece of freshmen work in need of a good copy editor.

And I was so convinced of this, that I put it aside, afraid to read it or work on it. But as my ideas for novellas wane, I decided to get to work on the sequel to The Haven, because I still loved those characters.

But that meant reopening and rereading The Haven. I was determined to whip it into shape, even conceding that I might need to rewrite parts of it.

And to my shock… it’s good. It’s much better than I remember. And me being me, I’ve been live tweeting the reread.

Are there typos, grammatical errors, and some awkward prose? Damn straight there are.

Is it still a good story?

There isn’t nearly as much work to do as I had been convinced.

Writing is a tough gig as it is. We’re making art, which means we’re handing out little bits and pieces of our souls for public consumption. There’s a reason we feel insecure about what we do. Nobody like rejection, especially not when it comes to something that they worked on for several years, something they put their soul in to.

On the other hand, you can’t let those insecurities run your life or your art.  And talking about them seems to help.

Today, I’m going to get some work on my baby done. And it’s not going to be easy. I have five straight chapters of fighting to reread and edit, and my fights… they give me fits, easily the thing I do least well.

But I’m going to get them done, and I’m going to continue working of these books, despite the whispers that jackass implanted in my brain: ‘Vanity publishing, Twice as long as it needs to be, uninspired, unoriginal tripe.’

Take your bad energy and shove it. Today, I don’t have time to weighed down by my insecurities.  I have some fight scenes to edit.