I don't know if this is a blog or a journal anymore.

In Like A Lamb...Or is it a Lion?

March is here! And with it, the realization that I have not been keeping up to date with this blog nearly enough. The local community college's musical has been well underway and shows have a way of sapping energy from you, even from the rest of your day. The matinee (a term which normally refers to an early afternoon show that was used today meaning "have fun getting up before 7 am") was this morning and I spent the rest of the day in sort of a dazed fog, mostly daydreaming and philosophical thoughts. I have come to one conclusion though: I'm scared. 

I have used the excuse that I am waiting on my amateur editors to send my story in to a publisher and that is the truth (which is ironic, since I have mentioned this before and I know that a lot of them read this...YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). But it's a convenient excuse nonetheless. Now I know this is nothing new. People have been afraid to show their work to the world since the first Neanderthal tried to explain fire to his loin-cloth clad comrades. But there's a reason for it, not the least of which is the process. Where should I even begin in searching for a publisher? What if the agent I'm interested in specializes in only one genre and I want to publish in multiple? Will I have to find more than one? Can you even legally do that? But more important than all that: what if what I wrote just isn't good enough? What if I am just not good enough? 

Yes, I know people are going to comment and tell me "Oh, of course you're good! You're amazing!!" And it's not that I don't love those comments. And I do believe the friends and family that have read my work are intelligent and discerning. But there's no accounting for bias. The fact of the matter is, for all that you who are related to and/or friends with me, you're never going to be truly as harsh as someone who doesn't know me at all. An agent, a publisher, an editor...they don't have a reason to speak any more highly of my work than it justly deserves. 

So how am I supposed to discern this for myself? Do I pester and irk those who volunteered to be editors and hope they show as little bias as possible? Do I find some random forum site to post the story and hope it isn't torn apart by trolls or becomes viral and makes the actual purchase of the book a moot point? Do I try to find other writers and pray that they're own ego doesn't make them look down on my work? Or do I trust my own mind, a fickle place speckled with neurosis that has so rarely been able to focus on one story long enough to create it entirely?

I have dreamed of becoming an author since I was 10. To learn in my 20s that I'm just not good enough would be destruction of a decade. A decade of imagining the covers, the signings, the best-seller lists. A decade of writing and rewriting, brainstorming and frantic, excited typing. To actually put the weird ideas that have gone around my head for so long in front of an expert is an incredible gamble: risk the destruction of the dream for the chance that it might come true. There's a part of me that wonders if the bet isn't better left unmade.