On Edge

I am afraid. It is normal to feel fear especially when you are on the brink of something. That is exactly where I stand, on the precipice. One step forward or one step back will make the entire difference, or perhaps no difference at all. It is the unknown that I fear. I have always been strong, a self taught writer, an eager learner, a go-getter, but now I feel vulnerable, unsure. Am I afraid of failure or success? Both?

I have had a work in progress for a few years. Now that I am on the final edit of my 84,000 word novel, and a few months away from pitching it, I am squirming, listening to all the self-doubt, those things I tell you all not to listen to.

I have always been satisfied to take baby steps along my writing path. I submit and wait. I don't simultaneously submit. I recycle as soon as something is rejected, and I am content to send it out and let it go, although sometimes I get impatient for a response. I am not devastated by rejections. I try not to tackle more than I am capable of. I plod along at my own pace. I market my own work; I do book signings, blogposts and have appeared on three TV channels. But the thought of a marketing campaign is unnerving.

I know what's ahead if I succeed. I personally know writers who have started their own literary magazines with gusto. I have a friend who has just been contacted by an agent who wants to represent her memoir. And I have another friend whose books have been optioned as Lifetime Movie Channel movies.

I have always been content to sit back and watch others ride those high waves. I've been content with the low ones because I am willing to take it slow and easy. Now that the pace is picking up, I'm nervous, ready to call it off or at least postpone it.

My novel, still untitled, is about four very different women friends in their late thirties, who simultaneously went AWOL from their unhappy marriages in the '80s. It has a layered plot with major twists. It is about their children, their pasts and their futures. It details their struggles, their humorous escapades and predicaments, the affairs of their lives. Oh yes, there is retribution for their cheating husbands, a crazy mother-in-law, and real, sometimes raw emotion. It is about their growth as women.

Early readers, especially women of that era, have given it good reviews and have given me advice which I have incorporated into my book. I feel like I am in my last weeks of my first pregnancy, back when I wanted to keep that baby inside me and not be forced to go through the painful labor and delivery. I knew the final product would be both awesome and an awesome responsibility, one that I simultaneously longed for and feared.

I feel that way again. I ask myself, what am I waiting for? Is it time to step out or step back? I am on the brink.