Sharing is Caring

It's almost time for me to start recruiting readers for this work - which, I must confess, is beginning to scare me a little. As much as this book is planted firmly in the realm of the supernatural (yet still firmly rooted in a small town and suburban high school for much of the story), and is utterly fantastical and unrealistic, it's hard not to feel as if you're opening up your heart and soul for criticism every time somebody reads just a single sentence.

These characters are people you've created, their lives something you've designed from scratch. It's not like introducing your friends to somebody in the real world, where their actions and words and choices are of their own making and their own directive, and you can excuse any offensive or embarassing personality quirks as being 'just them' and having little to do with you. This is all from your own mind, your own heart - and it's scary.

I'm scared.

Yet, this is something all writers must deal with and must get over, if the work is to be a success and read by a wide audience. It takes courage and gall to even put together a decent-sized opus, let alone have people scrutinise it and give their opinion. And it's something I've known for a very long time.

I found this great quote to sum it up:

There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.  ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Yeah, sounds about right.

It's exciting too, though, I have to admit. So many late nights and long days have gone into this, assignments hurried as I've been too busy working on a chapter to put 100% into my schoolwork, appointments missed... and at last it's almost at the point of being read. Which is, ultimately, the point.

Guess I just have to man up and get over it, and pretty fast, huh?

How do you other writers deal with it?