I have one week left before my manuscript goes to the editor, so I’m going to try and do one more read-through this week.

It’s terrifying and exciting at the same time… Because I’m hopeful that reading it again after a few months off will get me excited about writing more, and motivate me to stop ignoring the four open tabs of WIPs that have been staring at me for the past two weeks….

But also…. what if it sucks? What if I notice all the things that are wrong with it and am embarrassed to send it to the editor?

And I know that, in all probability, it does suck, that it should suck at this point. It’s a first novel, and even though I’ve revised it several times, and I’ve had other people read it and give me their thoughts, it’s probably never going to be as good as I want it to be.

And that has to be ok. Because otherwise I’ll never publish it, and I’ll never write another one. You have to start somewhere. You can’t edit a blank page. There’s no where to go, but up… etc, etc, etc…

But that doesn’t make it less scary.

So this week, I’m going to do the things that get me ready to do it scared. I’m not even sure what that means right now, but if the options are to do it scared, or not at all, I choose to do the thing that scares me.

“Because,’ she said, ‘when you’re scared, but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.” -Neil Gaiman (Coraline)