The Writer Blues

I was just thinking about this the other day- like most writers I get moments of extreme depression when it comes to the art of fiction. There is always this fear that everyone is just going to wake up one day and say, “What did we ever see in him?” and declare me a hack and stop reading and buying or caring about me. I know, it sounds like complaining about winning the lottery.

But in a way, it isn’t. It’s a fear that never goes away. And I think it comes from choosing a profession where rejection is the norm. You get used to rejection and fast, or you don’t ever succeed. You need to fail and fail and keep on failing until you get it right. And your failures, while not exactly public, are always around to haunt you in the form of rejection letters of stories past and current.

And they don’t go away. They sit there, staring at you. You can’t delete the memory from your mind. And so they stay resident, like some malicious mental virus, preying on the boot sector of your memories (ergh, that was a little too geeky, I think).

I bring this up because even though these writer blues are fewer and far between these days, they are still there. They still crop up and I get this panic that everything so far has been a mistake, and any minute now everyone is just going to laugh at me. It’s a strange thought, but a paralyzing one. And I appreciate the writer friends who sit and listen to me whine, and let me complain. Because really, talking about it makes it smaller. It makes the fear look pint sized, and I can tackle it, shove it aside and start writing some more.

So, a quick and brief thanks to all the writers out there this past week that had to hear me bitch and moan. I appreciate it. Let’s hope the next bout of whoa-is-me-itus won’t come back for another year or two. I’ve got too much to do, and don’t have the time to be paralyzed by irrational fears. I’ve got bigger fears on the horizon. Ones much scarier than that.