Rosemary has urged me to polish a piece I submitted a few months back at a Zona Rosa meeting for a compilation of essays the group hopes to publish next winter. I have to admit I’m thrilled (it would be my first published piece), but scared out of my mind. My “what if’s” are back, rearing their ugly heads, trying to convince me it’s not a good (read: failproof) idea.
I was watching part of Pretty Woman yesterday (which I’ve still never seen all the way through, but I get the gist – Richard Gere falls for the prostitute), and this scene came on after I started watching it:
Vivian: People put you down enough, you start to believe it.
Edward Lewis: I think you are a very bright, very special woman.
Vivian: The bad stuff is easier to believe. You ever notice that?
Replace “people” with “my own insecurity,” and it’s about right. I’m my own worst critic. In fact, I’m my own walking group of nay-sayers. I’m too scared to even give myself the chance. I’m so terrified of failure that I’d rather opt out and say, “Well, at least I didn’t look dumb doing it.”
But then I think about what could happen after I published this piece – marketing myself as a writer, taking the plunge into freelancing, actually being googleable – and it turns my insides to a fluttery pile of mush.
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