Fear of Success

Life has been a wild ride lately. Dizzying like I just got off the Tilt-A-Whirl or something. I wish I could let myself be excited about it, but I think I’m still half in denial that in a short time I could possibly have a publishing contract. I’m scared actually. I never understood being scared of success. I mean what could possibly be so scary about getting closer to a dream I’ve had since childhood? I should be excited and proud to have gotten this far, but instead I find myself swathed in anxiety every single day. Sometimes I wake up in a panic. Sometimes I go to bed that way. Sometimes it just hits me between the eyes while I’m sitting at my computer. My mind races. Palms sweat. Full blown panic. What if people HATE it? What if people hate ME? What if my day job and writing turn out to be incompatible, and I have to choose? And what if I choose wrong? What if I can’t write a second book anywhere near as good as this one? Can’t pay the bills? Can’t handle the stress? I’m telling you, I’m scared of EVERYTHING. I know I shouldn’t worry about it so much. I should just enjoy the ride for pete’s sake. That’s what life is all about. Enjoying the ride. If I can’t just relax and trust that I’m on the right path, then it’s going to be a very painful trip. And I don’t LIKE pain. So if I’m doing this to myself, what am I getting out of it? I think part of me is afraid of getting excited and then being let down. And my life supports not getting excited. There’s no one really to get excited WITH. My family thinks of my writing as a perpetual quirk. “She’s listening to the voices again.” A few friends have cared enough to keep tabs on my projects, but most of them think of it as a neat side item. “Did you know Cessie writes and is an actress.” (They are not wrong, but I always notice how these items are lumped together. Because I’m a TERRIBLE actress-I do it for fun and laughs and friendships and joy and challenging myself. But I write because if I don’t, I’ll die. These things do not belong in the same sentence. They are so very different to me. I love these friends. Just many of them do not know me very well.) I’ve had little companionship riding along on this journey, but mostly I’ve gone it alone. While alone can be good when you have limited time and you need to focus on the prize, and alone is good when you tend to listen to every crit like it’s gospel, alone also means no one holds your hand when you are scared to death. It also sucks when you want to celebrate and no one understands how important it is to you. It sucks when your agent wants you to rewrite the end, and make it better, and you think you may have done that, but no one ever read the end BEFORE the rewrite, and so they can’t really give you feedback on the changes. This alone-ness seems to have a dark side right now. I guess this is a call to action. Plug in. Find fellow travelers. Stop being so alone that it hurts.

On the bright side (because being a whiner makes me feel like a bad person), I just finished another quick round of rewrites, and the manuscript has a new title I believe we’ll be submitting it under. On the bright side, I am OK with this title, because it isn’t so far off from my own. I expect there may be a few more minor tweaks this coming week before my agent feels its ready to be submitted, and I’m good with all that. And although I fear there will be more panic attacks before it all goes down this summer, I’m preparing to deal with those on a first come-first serve basis.