Making Myself Sick

All self-help fans raise your hands. If you’re anything like me, you’ll take the quizzes in magazines like O and Self, and pay attention to those rather simplistic tally-the-points summations that appear at the end of the article. I took one recently and found that a fear of perfection could be stalling my writing…I suspected it for like, ever, but somehow looking at it in that moment made me kinda sick.

I’m like a lot of writer’s, forever revising, always editing, saying I haven’t submitted because it’s just not ready yet! Although I have collected a few rejection emails lately – yay me for submitting! – I know I need to step my game up. I could whine forever that my day job is sucking me dry and wouldn’t it be maaahvelous if I could pull an Amanda Hocking and work from home telling Sherrod Stories for the rest of my life in the comfort of my own lil’ ole’ home?

But if that little questionnaire was right, whining is a subsidiary to fear, which again, makes me kinda sick.

Granted, I have to pat myself on the back a little. I started this blog, a twitter account and write more nights than not, but I think Ima have to start a kind of ‘get tough on writing’ campaign for myself. Set some hard ass goals, a certain number of pages per night type thang.

‘Cause I gotta tell ya. Being so moved by my characters antics that I cry in the shower yet couldn’t send a few pages describing that particular scene of death-and-sadness-and-hope-for-the-future to save my life, is really making me sick.