Sharing

I sent Chapters 1-4 to someone else last night. Again, I was on the edge of my seat, nerves raw, for the entire night, hoping she'd like them.

When I came in this morning, and she emailed me to tell me they were good, I was so relieved. I knew this would be hard - writing, but I never knew it would make me so shaky. I'm a strong person - always have been, but now I feel like part of my self-worth is inextricably tied to this book. If I send a chapter to someone, and they don't like it, will my self-confidence take too much of a hit? Possibly. Though so far, even when I've gotten negative feedback, I've been able to turn it around and make the book better.

I worry a little, that if I send the completed book off to publishers and get rejected, that I won't cope well with it. Despite my type A personality and outward self confidence, I'm really unsure of myself in a lot of situations. I just hide it well until I work through the uncertainty and feel confident again.

So back to the feedback I received, she's going to re-read it again and try to offer suggestions. I've been editing a bit the past few days and one thing I really need to work on is variety. I've noticed that I use certain words and phrases all the time. "Steady" is one of those words. It's all through the book. I probably have more instances of the word "steady" than I do of any other word except for maybe "the" or "and". It's almost comical. So I need to work on variety. I need to come up with better, more interesting, more varied ways of saying what I need to say. I also need to cut some of these instances altogether. Now that I'm aware of the problem though, hopefully I can work to fix it.

Whew. Getting positive feedback this morning really steadied me...no, reassured me...no, affirmed me, no...aw hell. It just felt good.