I Suck, Part 2

I have to be honest with you: I've been a little reluctant to blog lately. So I'm outting myself.

I'm aware that a lot of my posts here have been about being nervous and upset and hacked off and then nervous again. In fact, I think I just covered the whole blog. But it does leave me longing to name the good stuff about working my way towards being a "real" author -- you know, "real" as in, I get paid for it. Why won't I name the good stuff?

I get good comments back. I would be some kind of s**thead if I didn't acknowledge that. I get really good comments back. I get pages of "brilliant chapter!" and "I'm hooked!" and "I can't wait for the next chapter!" -- all about a story that effectively buries the original heroine. That is not bad, if I do say so myself. Pretty damned good beans.

So why am I still so nervous? And why am I cursing so much, which you're not seeing because this thing has a delete button and a * button?

At a certain point, I think the rest of the universe gets tired of my nerves and my conviction that the next chapter is the one in which I'll drop the ball and be found out as a fraud. That is how I feel, you know. Just over the ridge, in the next chapter, my characters will do something so bats**t that it will be clear I've been faking this all along, and I have no business doing anything artistic whatsoever, and I'm really a horn-rimmed glasses wearing geek who lurks in the basement down the street.

You'd only be wrong about the glasses -- they're silver.

But that gets on people's nerves after a while. How often can you reassure a person before you're out of reassurance? The only thing left on the shelf is resentment. I can feel myself becoming a black hole of neediness, and I'm getting on my own nerves with it. I resent me for it, so why won't I let it go?

I cling to the concept of myself as a failure and an incompetent. But I'm not a failure and I'm not incompetent. I'm green all right, greener than Greeney McGreen in the month of Green. But I am not incompetent. So why hang out in that worldview anyway? What am I getting out of it that I don't think I'll get out of success and a new, bigger, meatier set of goals?

I'm not dumb, folks, and I know the answer: it feels safer and it's easier if I suck.

Oh, yeah. You see, if I suck at this, I never have to do any real work. I can just noodle around, and toy with things, and never really make myself uncomfortable with, you know, thoughts or even worse, effort. Eee, gad.

If I suck, then I don't have to risk thinking I don't and then being corrected -- that's a really scary one. Who wants to think they're some genius only to be handed their ass in the first minute?

If I suck, then I never have to learn how to deal with winning graciously, which is a surprisingly difficult position to be in. That brings up a whole new set of "What if I do it wrong?" anxieties.

And so on and so forth.

I realize this is not rocket science and it takes maybe half a firing brain cell to figure all this out. Of course what I'm doing is threatening. And I suspect, if any of you are left here by now, you're bored witless with my moping over my poor pathetic sense of threat. Poor me -- only 8 billion of my closest pals in the same position. I know.

And here's the really funny part: it's probably as easy -- and difficult -- as just soldiering on, and doing the work and getting the critiques anyway. Like Winter Warlock, I need to put one foot in front of the other. I probably don't need to walk like that, though. I hope not! But what I hate about this is that's the solution. Just Do It.

And while we're here, why do I want to moan and analyze too? Because that's easier than actually shutting up. I know it; it's the difference between mere activity and actual productivity. I let myself mistake one for the other. Obviously I'm not really good at shutting up -- hence, a blog about me. But I have got to let go of this neediness, this demand that everyone else but me fill in my sense that I can do this if I really want to. I keep demanding that other people give me permission to continue by gushing over every damned comma. This has to stop. It's both disrespectful and banal of me. Predictable and shallow and even abusive.

And there is no snappy way to label this insight. I just need to stop it, and respect my readers enough to rely on myself for some support. Their job is to read, and if I did my job, enjoy. My job is to just shut up and do my job, so they can do theirs.