Figuring out my audience while writing a young reader’s book.

#4

You know, I would’ve thought that the spirit-crushing doubt that one experiences while stitching up their monster of a writing project was the worst part of the creative ordeal.  Turns out I was wrong.  The trepidation that kicks in after you finish the first draft can be just as daunting.

Ever hurt yourself in one of those “Ssssssssssssst-OOH!!” kind of ways?  Like, you’re shaving a part of your body that you can’t see all that well with a cheap “safety” razor, and then you zig when you should have maintained a nice, smooth, even zag?  You hear that “KRTCH!!” of flesh being ripped open, that uncomfortably familiar feeling of something viscous and sticky running from some intimately internal place, and the reality-boggling pain of having shredded the skin off of an inconceivably tender area?  If you haven’t, stop reading and go do it, and then you’ll know what I mean.

Arright, so now, you’re in this amazing amount of pain, and you know you’re bleeding.  But do you look at it right away?  Logically, you would – but there are many of those in this world [me] who would pause before taking a look at his handiwork.  There’s something about not looking at the thing that somehow puts off the magnitude of what happened. If I don’t see it, it’s not as bad as it feels.  Out of sight, somewhat out of mind.

Right now, I’ve put my story out of sight.  I finished the first draft of The Princess Project one week ago (28 October), and I haven’t really looked back since.  There’s something mildly unpleasant about reviewing the work I’ve done, as if doing so would show just how truly incompetent I am with the written word.  You would think that not glancing back at the finished draft would be a comforting thing, but no – it really only serves to ramp up my sense of dread about what I’ll find when I double-click the file once more.

The theme of this post was going to be doubt, but I find there’s plenty of that to write about here just by thinking about what I wrote.    The fear that I will inevitably be razzed for anything I put down is a powerful one, and it works on my whether I’m actually writing or not.  I gotta find a way to get over it, to surmount this dread and move forward.  It’s really not helping me meet my deadline at all.

KM Scott is an aspiring writer currently teaching English in South Korea.  He is currently sweating over a young-reader’s book, the development of which he chronicles in this blog.  Pray for him!