The last week or so I've been off. Snappish. Irritable. Stressed. No, teeth-clenching-eye-twitching-stressed.

I knew why. I was getting beta-reader feedback, and while it was all good (as in useful) some of it was also hard to hear. Not that I didn't want to hear it, but when it all hits at once (and with a few conflicting opinions), it gets a tad overwhelming.

I may have emailed a certain bestest-CP and totally freaked out on her. She may have talked me down some (OK, a lot) ;-)

But even her fantastic email couldn't take away the real reason for my freaking: the fear.

I have a polish to do on this manuscript, a query to revise and a synopsis to rewrite. And then? Then I roll the dice again and start querying.

I know that the fear isn't going to go away. That with every step forward in my career the fears will morph into different ones. But I can't let the fear keep me from trying, and that was what I was doing the last week. I was letting the fear take root without acknowledging that that was what was happening.

But today I turned on Gen's playlist and Kelly Clarkson's "If No One Will Listen" came on. And these lines really hit me:

No one can tell you where you alone must go

There's no telling what you'll find there

And God I know the fear that eats away at your bones

It's screaming every step just stay here

It was a bit of a "duh" moment. I went and opened my diary and wrote "I'm scared"-- cause I'd been talking around it, even to my diary for days. But that's it: I'm scared. Scared I'll screw up my book with revisions, scared I won't ever make it, even scared that I will.

I'm scared. And that's okay. Jess has put together some 'research,' and apparently so is everyone else.

The problem, the real stress, comes from letting it paralyze me; giving in and just staying here.

I think... I hope... I got over it a little tonight. I was wound up doing a character interview with Gen because the fear was still holding my brain hostage. So I asked her a bunch of questions, whatever was popping into my head, and then I found myself typing "When do you think you'll be ready to work on revisions again?"

Gen's Answer: "As soon as you stop being afraid of them. I'm not going anywhere; you can't change me. Stop worrying so much. You can mess with the details all you want. We'll be OK. I can take it, honest. All of it's already here, it's just the execution."

When Gen of all (imaginary) people is telling me not to worry? That's when I realize I've really gotta let it go.

There's a monster at the end of this book-- but there's one at the beginning, too. And on every page. It's always there, always Grover*. I can't live in fear of a monster that's just me.

Revising is scary. Querying is scary. Writing is scary.

But writing is me. So here I go.

*I've talked about this book before, but for those of you who aren't familiar, clickity