Deadlines v. Doubt

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
~ Douglas Adams

Deadlines. I have a love/hate relationship with them. Sometimes, the closer they get, the more the fires of creativity burn the Muse to a writing frenzy. I love deadlines. Other times, they freeze the ink in my veins and not one coherent paragraph comes out. I hate deadlines.

But perhaps deadlines are merely the symptom and not the disease. Perhaps it is more fear that has the power to still the pen in my hand and freeze the ink in my veins. Fear that I will not write anything worth reading. Fear that I am just fooling myself that I can write. Fear that once I submit my work, the editor, in a voice straight out of His Girl Friday, will say: “Kid, put away your pen and ink and take up plumbing. You’ll never be a writer.”

But I am a writer. I cannot not write. So what is there to be afraid of? If I do not write out of fear that I cannot write anything good, than nothing gets written and no one will ever know, most of all myself! But if I write, and revise and revise and revise again ~ then I have got something to work with. As do my editors.

Speaking of which, I heard from one of them today. Asking me where my essay was. It’s here. In my head. Simmering. This does not help my editor. She cannot read the essay in my head. Ergo ~ I must put it on paper. How mundane!

Oremus pro invicem,
Mikaela