Showing my work to people has left me with a certain level of performance anxiety. I completely own that this is my garbage I need to learn to deal with. But it's left me a little (ok, a lot) nervous about actually doing the work and completing the story. I said I would never serialize again. What I now know I meant is, I will never again show anyone incomplete work.

What was I thinking?

I have that very typical anxiety: now that I'm getting to the end, what if people don't like it, and don't like the way I've written it? It's very beginner-ish, isn't it, to admit that? And another thing: That sounds pathetic. I know it. I know I need to just suck it up and work, and screw what people think. Well, we'll have to live with me being a big baby, then.

Basically, what happens in the story is what happens, irrespective of me, or the readers, or the guy down the street. That's just what happens. That's never the part I'm nervous about. I know what happens.

No, I'm having to adjust myself to acknowledge that other people also have ideas and expectations and hopes for the story. This is running up against my almost crippling emotional need to seem pleasant at all times -- because I'm insane, really -- and it's what's creating the performance anxiety. It's not that I begrudge anyone their opinion or the expression of it to their friends and neighbors if they choose. Hell, if they're talking about my story, they're at least talking about my story! As far as I am concerned they can knock themselves out!

But it is a new and somewhat withering atmosphere to work in. If I want publication I have to learn to deal with this. But maybe timing really is everything. I've shown unfinished work, essentially in its first draft, to a lot of people. I'm not ungrateful that they have fallen all over themselves to tell me how good it is, and how much potential it has. How can anyone be ungrateful for that? But when I lose confidence, I tend to worry that it will come across as though I'm not grateful, or I don't believe people, the implication being: if I don't take so-and-so's praise and live by it, I'm being a big jerk because I'm just a comment whore.

People, all writers are comment whores. So are actors and directors and painters and sculptors, even chefs. No one creates in a void. As I pointed out to someone the other day: specific praise is nice, but did you actually like it? Did it seem good to you?

I know what I was thinking. I was thinking I write too slow and that people would lose interest if they had to wait for the whole thing to be finished, or worse yet I would lose interest waiting for the whole thing to be finished. So I rushed chapters out there, and people have graciously told me they love it, and I grew rather addicted to that praise, and now there's the threat my fix won't ever happen again and--

Insane. Batshit Crazy. Now I understand the need to trust not only myself, not only my characters. I needed to trust them and me and my readers, that all three of us would show back up at the right time in the right way, if the story was compelling enough for all of us to do so. I'm not angry that I'm learning this lesson at this point, because what the hell -- at least I'm learning it. At least, I hope I'm learning it. Time will tell. No, I just wish things a little different.

I wish I wrote faster, and I wish I wasn't nervous.