Unmasking the Hidden Enemy: Why Writing Sparks Our Deepest Fears—and How to Conquer Them
I’m afraid it won’t be my best work and people will hate it. And that’s a rational fear, because every writer has been slammed for something they wrote. I have in the past. I know I will in the future.
I deal with that by asking myself: “Is this the best work I can do today?” (I don’t ask if it’s the best work I’ve ever done in my life. By definition, that only happens once in my life. I ask if it’s the best I can do on this particular day.)
If the answer is no, then I rewrite it until it’s the best I can do today. And then I send it out. I remind myself that J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling and Stephen King all have received scathing reviews, and it didn’t kill them. I’m not in their league, so I’m guaranteed to get scathing reviews too, many times. I won’t enjoy them, but they won’t kill me. (And I won’t go out of my way to find them either. If somebody puts rat poison in your spaghetti, you don’t have to eat it.)
