Letting Go.

Okay, so I'm in the land of dreaded revisions. At least I dread them. I know I shouldn't frown at the prospect of tightening up my MS, but writing just feels so free and exciting in that first draft, and I love watching how the story unfolds before me. But revisions are more like work, the serious stuff, no more writing with reckless abandon. Now it's time to remove all the overwriting and press the delete key a lot more than I would have ever imagined. (A whole lot more) And it's in these moments of revising my work that I tend to second guess myself the most. I used to wonder if this was normal. Did J.K. Rowling, Alyson Noel, or Stephanie Meyer ever stop and ask themselves: "What am I doing-I actually just created a football game for broom riding wizards, a vampire who reads people's thoughts and feeds off the blood of animals, and an immortal something or other, when I really should  be vacuuming." Well, of course they did. And self doubt is just another ingredient that makes us human. Without it, we'd walk around feeling superior and our work would suffer greatly. We'd never attempt to fix something, if we felt it wasn't broken to start with. It took me awhile to realize that we must learn to feed off of our self doubt. It is, after all, the driving force that makes our work better. The voice of self doubt is not an internal whisper trying to persuade you to quit. (mine sometimes like's to scream and say inappropriate things-truly hateful) It's actually a powerful asset forcing us to persevere and we must lean on that voice, use it, and allow it to mold us into the writer's we are destined to become-published or not. (published would be better than not) So tell me, have you made your peace with self doubt? If you're still battling it out, that's okay. You can tell us that too. It's what we're all here for. (Jeeze, I'm all serious today. Worry not people-it will not last;)