Confidence

I haven't been feeling the most confident about my writing lately.

I bought some covers for stories I've been working on and shared them on the blog a few months ago. I like to give out any news that I can as soon as I can, but now I sort of regret it.

One of the hardest things for me is writing the blurbs on the back of a book I am publishing about which books are going to come next. I want people to get excited about the next books, maybe even look for them after they are published, but at the same time, I can never really tell for sure what story I am going to complete next.

Even if I already started writing them, whose to say I can finish them? What if the next book doesn't turn out right somehow? Should I publish it anyway just because I promised people I would? I doubt that I could do that, but I feel like I'm letting people down if I don't.

Even if I finish writing a book, like I did with these most recent books, there's always the possibility that I'll show them to critique partners and suddenly decide that I hate them, which happened to me lately. Ugh. I worked for months on giving and receving critiques. Now that I'm adding the critiques to my notes for my story, I feel like my story is the worst story ever.

On the positive side, I got really great critiques from my critique partners! If I can incorporate all of this stuff and fix my story completely, then it's going to be the best story ever.

On the other hand, the critiques I got were discouraging. I'm afraid it's not possible to fix it. Which is exactly why if I can correct this mountain of problems, it will become the best story ever.

In fact, one of the biggest critiques I received was that people absolutely hate my main character. Agh! Does this mean I have to change her story entirely to make her more likeable or can I just add little details here and there, where she does nice things, to make her more redeemable?

Not to mention that there are problems with the pacing and the romance of the characters, which drives the story. I even messed up a bit on some of the fantasy setting and rules.

I love being a self-published author, but to some degree, there is something I'm sad about when it comes to not having a publishing company. A publishing company would force me to focus.

Publishing Company (PC): "You finished romance novel 1, now write romance novel 2."

Me: "But I want to work on fantasy novel 3!"

PC: "I don't care! We are paying you to finish romance novel 2."

Me: "But I hate romance novel 2!"

PC: "Do it anyway."

And I'd get it done without procrastinating by writing blog posts, going on facebook, or working on other story ideas I have. And if it was really terrible when I was done, they would tell me. I can never truly know on my own whether it's a good or bad idea to publish something. I just have to do it and see what happens. Then I have to take full responsibility for what I've done either way.

Every new book you write, you want to be your big book. The one where people notice you. The one you can use to make a lot of money and use to justify to your friends about why you don't have a day job.

It gives me a headache to think about it.