Insecure Writer’s Support Group: Reflecting on 2017

This is my monthly post as part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a great group of supportive writers, helping one another through our writing ups-and-downs.

There is also a great Facebook Community for more daily connection!  More posts from the group are tagged on Twitter at #IWSG.

 

IWSG Day Question: As you look back on 2017, with all its successes and failures, if you could backtrack, what would you do differently?

Well, now… what a question.

2017 was a rough one for me in the writing world. I struggled to write — my fiction took a serious hit, and even my blog suffered a bit. Heck, there were even three months where I didn’t even manage to get my IWSG post written! Thankfully I didn’t get vetted in those months, because I would have been dropped (that happens when you don’t post for a few months – you can always sign up again – but I quite like my mid-100’s location on the current list).

And most of the ones I did write tended to be about how to get my writing started again….

At the same time, I worked with some awesome ladies to put together a short story collection and we published it!

It’s pretty exciting to have something out there, but it is certainly bringing anxiety up in me. At the same time as I’m working on promotion, I’m having to glare-down the part of me that keeps wondering if the story is any good. Does it deserve to be in this collection?  

It’s kind of strange.  

On the one hand I’m doing the internet-equivalent of shouting from the rooftops. I’m so excited about it, I’ve promoting it where I can, asking people to read it and review it for me.

On the other hand I’m scared to read what I wrote. I’m constantly silencing that voice which tells me that I am an imposter.  That this story really doesn’t deserve to be out there.  That it will be mocked and torn to shreds.

I keep trying to silence that voice.  I try as much as I can. And I’ll keep working on silencing it until it learns to shut itself up.

 

Honestly, if I could backtrack I’m not sure I would do anything differently in the writing world. While I wasn’t very productive, I feel like it was a break I needed — there were other things that claimed my time and attention, and those are just as important.