Writer’s Fear
Posted by bukarella on February 11, 2010
Why is it so scary to share your writing? Your ideas? I never thought I will be in this terrifying club of scared writers.
I don’t want anyone looking at my story and going “that’s dumb, next?” I want people to CARE about my characters, like I do; I want the reader to think it’s brilliant, and classic, and not the least bit boring. I don’t think my skin is as thick as I’d like it to be, and when someone is allowed to read the words that I poured a great deal of my heart and obscene amounts of coffee into – the nerves are giving in!
At the same time, there is nothing like honest feedback. It’s priceless. The lesson learned today? Be brave. Share your writing and share your ideas with people who will not be afraid to tell you the hard truth.
logangrey20 said
Well I can certainly understand your feeling. I worked on the script for my graphic novel for about 3 years before I let anyone read a word of it. Luckily I ran into a group of awesome women with great ideas and sharp critique skills. If you are interested in having someone look at your work that will offer helpful insight and suggestions on how to improve without being harsh go to our site: http://www.chimeracritiques.com
We have a submission page and you can get a free critique from all of us that we will send back to you via email. Good luck with it.
bukarella said
I will check it out, thank you. I’m sure having a close-knit group can be very helpful. I’m finding it to be a very humbling experience.
Keri Peardon said
I know what you mean. When I first gave my proof copy to my husband to read (he didn’t even know I had written a book until I was ordering the printed copy), I was all nervous. I’d lay beside him in bed and watch him reading it. When he laughed, I so wanted to know what he was laughing about–hopefully a funny part, not a silly part. Sometimes he made comments that I had to agree with and sometimes he made comments that I disagreed with, and sometimes he made comments that I want to get a second opinion on before I decide for or against a change.
But after about the third day of reading on it, he said, “I’m actually enjoying your book.” By the time he was done with it, he declared it was a good book. See, if he had known about it all along, he might have told me I was wasting my time, that I needed to be doing something constructive, like looking for a real job or getting the laundry caught up. But having given it to him in its nearly-final form, he was able to see that it does have a valid chance of getting published because, as we both agreed, we’ve certainly read worse.
bukarella said
thank you for stopping by, Keri. My significant other is the only one I can share my writing with at the moment as well. I am still as much of a coward as I was when I wrote the post months ago.
Keri Peardon said
I have now let a few other people read my book–including a co-worker and my boss (she’s still in the process of reading it). But I admit I’m getting nervous sending people pieces and parts of my book as part of query letters. Letting friends and family read it is one thing (no offense, but they are lay people when it comes to literature), but sending it off into the hands of English majors makes me super nervous. I start getting flashbacks to creative writing class in college–and not in a good way.
I actually started sending out queries the first of September, but when I hit the agencies on the list who wanted sample chapters, I froze up. I read my book through several more times, tweaking it some more (and I ended up redoing my query letter… again) before I finally screwed up enough courage to send it to those agents–a full month later.
National Novel Writing Month starts in November, and there are a lot of regional groups that get together to meet. I’m going to a local meeting tonight (looking forward to it!). You might like to go to a meeting (if there’s one in your area) and talk to other writers; almost everyone is a first-time writer, so I don’t think it will be so intimidating to share. http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/forum