To read more from participants in Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group, click this link.
For the last five weeks, I’ve been camped out on a writer’s “high.” At the end of August, I put my head down and refused
to let it up until I completed chapter-by-chapter revisions of Honeydew Ever
After. Once I finished those, I read the
entire 93,000 word manuscript out loud, twice, mending a boatload of
typos as well as logic and timing issues. After that, I
tore apart my first two chapters, yanking out anything smacking of yawn-worthy. Yesterday, I sent the manuscript off to one
of my amazing readers, and while I have no doubt it will be returned with pounds
of red ink, for the first time, I’ve contemplated the future of this thing—such that, in an attempt to rest my throat between out loud reads,
I drafted a query letter—my first.
Exciting stuff, right? Right!
But also, wrong.
Shall I describe the “what if’s” dancing around in my head?
What if I’ve spent eighteen months (so far) on a story that’s
not good?
What if my writing is poor?
What if my readers are only being nice?
What if I send this thing out there and nothing happens?
Since the great bloodletting of 2009 wherein my head did not
survive the corporate chopping block, I have radically reduced the challenge of
my outside-of-the-home work, as well as my pay check, in order to focus on my
writing. In spite of my supportive
husband and daughter, this makes me feel guilty every single day. They have given me the gift of time to prove
myself at this thing I love. What if I don’t
repay them with success?
I know the solution to these negative thoughts is to keep
writing. I know it. But, write what?
I've started another story, but I don’t
love it the way I love Honeydew. I contemplate researching information for it, acknowledging
in this case, the time spent will act as a delay tactic because I’m not attached
to the story. Will that come? How much time do I invest before I know?
Oh, how I’d love to vault back to those last waning days of
summer when I threw off the covers at dawn, spooned down a bowl of oatmeal
before grinding the coffee and digging into my manuscript again. For those weeks, I weighed less, I danced
more, I sang all the time. I breathed in the aura of accomplishment circling my head and let it permeate my insides. All around me, a warm breeze of triumph
brushed my skin, even when I sat far from the computer.
Now though, exhilaration has drifted away—like a kite I
let go in the wind, the small dot of a helium balloon floating far above the
ocean. I’m in a holding pattern, a
little bereft, a little lost.
What if that feeling from this summer never comes back to me
again?
