The Salmon of My Doubt

I’ve been thinking so much about writing lately, which is not at all the same as saying, I’ve been writing so much lately, but there you have it.

I’ve been thinking so much about writing lately.

This is in some part due to the fact that on Saturday I begin this program with this writer as my mentor, and I am half a million parts excited and half a million parts mortified because my writing will be read, critiqued, judged, assessed.

And the truth is, it’s just not good enough. At least, not as it is right now, but that’s what they’ll be reading.

And this blog post is not about an opportunity for you to blow smoke up my ass, it’s really not. It’s about the fact that I am scared shitless.

I just finished reading On Writing by Stephen King, and I feel like he is quite a smart guy and there is no argument that he is quite an accomplished writer. And even if his style is not your style, there is no denying that he is a damn good storyteller.

Have you read On Writing? It’s good, it is. It’s good for Stephen King fans but it’s especially good for writers, because a guy that started off as an English teacher and then went on to sell a few gazillion books knows a thing or two about writing. But I did myself a great disservice by reading that book right now, when I am about to put myself totally out there with people that could potentially buoy or blow my ego right out of the writing biz.

He’s got some good rules, and I seem to break every single one in my own writing.

So now, instead of feeling 100% excited about attending a very prestigious writing program that I am SO LUCKY to be able to be a part of, I am scared shitless.

I will be called an amateur because I’m sure I tell and not show.

I will be considered a hack because I use passive verbs.

I will be dismissed because I throw adverbs around carelessly.

I will be laughed at because I have 12 years of professional experience, but it was accrued mainly writing prosaic liner notes for (albeit, best-selling) CDs with titles like, Garden in Provence, Natural Stress Relief and Celtic Grooves. 

I worry that my writing is not at all deliberate. I worry that it is too deliberate. I worry that my vocabulary is simplistic and my voice, dull. I worry that I don’t have an original bone in my body. I worry that I am not anything that I thought I was.  

I should be only excited. Hell, I should be packing.

Instead I am sitting here, scared shitless. 

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