The problem, of course, is the tiny flutter of fear that I am not good enough
I’m trying to make the most of this Crimbo Limbo time, those strange days between Christmas and New Year, where routine is suspended, to get some writing done. It feels good to be back at my keyboard again, after a break of several days. But I’m also strangely nervous. For the first time, there is a deadline that is set in stone; I simply MUST meet it.
I’ve never had that before as an author. Oh, as a journalist they were an integral part of my everyday life. Give me a deadline and I’d say with absolute confidence that I could and would hit it. I could calculate down to the minute how long something would take me to write, and juggling several deadlines at once was easy.
It’s not like that with novel-writing. Not for me, anyway. Each book is so different that I have no clue how long one will take.
As a self-published author, I’ve had the luxury of being able to write as and when I feel. If I think a novel will take me five months to write, but it actually takes eight months before I’m happy with it, so what? I can plod, tinker, rewrite, sit back and have a think about what I’ve done and then come back to it again after a week or so.
Not now. Now I have an agent and a publisher, both with expectations of what I can do. Don’t get me wrong, they are lovely people, and haven’t got the thumbscrews out (not yet, anyway. Perhaps that comes later). I am the one putting pressure on myself. Telling myself I must hit this deadline and show them I can do this. That I deserve the faith they have put in me. That I won’t mess up.
The problem, of course, is the tiny flutter of fear that I am not good enough to hit the deadline. That I don’t deserve the faith they have put in me. That I will mess up this golden opportunity.
But there is only one way to find out the truth: to stop worrying and get writing. So here I go…