A Place Between Doubt and Despair

I'm actually just kidding about the title of this blog post. Sort of.

Yesterday, that guy known as BLD around here wondered how to deal with doubt. I commented back that I wrote a million words and then found a surer voice that got rid of the doubt.

Most of the time.

Sometimes, my voice is surer in comedy. My roots are in comedy . . . that voice is more natural for me. Doubt is rarely present in my dialogue. Instead doubt sprinkles its way through larger arcs. Through themes that nudge at me.

Of course, the other element of this is the work ethic. When you go through an editorial process, there is, at least in my experience, a fermenting of wine. You take time to polish, send, get feedback from (in my case) my writers' group, then an agent, then an editor--or more than one editor. That time process exposes flaws. Then you get copy edited, then proofed--twice. You read your galleys. Each time in the process you have doubts, you polish. You don't leap in and publish before all those steps. I presume as more people pub e-books, they will invest in a "process"--create one that mimics the polishing a traditionally published book undergoes. And those e-books will stand out from the ones where exposure to criticism hasn't occurred.

So, as always, it becomes, for me, about that still, small voice. Have you ever met a writer at a conference without one? You know that writer. The one who asks fifty people to read his or her work, but any time someone offers suggestions, they shrug them off--the excuses can be varied, but it almost always amounts to an unwillingness to believe there is more craft to be learned. This writer plunges headlong--often quickly. The writer who queries without ever once exposing their novel to a read by another writer or editor who can offer pointed, constructive criticism.

Somewhere between doubt and headlong stubbornness lies the place where I think writers need to reside. It is a place. A Writer's Place. Where the writer presents their best work and then exposes it to make it better, where the writer can discern what advice is ringing true--even if it means starting from page one AGAIN--and what advice is subjectively just a different view point and doesn't carry as much weight. Doubt can be a good thing, as long as you eventually arrive at the Writer's Place where you can separate personal fears that hold you back from the hard work of bettering your words.

I'm working harder on my wip than I ever have on anything before. And I dance around panic. Frequently. But I'm working at finding that space where it's really about making it better. The Writer's Place.