I've Got a Theory: The Freak Out

I have a theory I've been thinking about a lot the last couple of days, and it goes a little like this:

You decide you want to be published. You set your sites on whatever that means to you.

Yeah.... You THINK you're looking straight at it, but you're really not. You're looking up and over all of the things that come along with it. I'm not talking about all the obstacles along the way. I'm talking about the things that come along with that goal that you don't really think about when you make the goal.

Things like:

• Sitting at a book signing that no one comes to.
• Having to write on a deadline.
• Speaking at conferences.
• If you write YA or MG or PB, doing school visits.
• Blogging/facebook/twitter/other social media that makes you step out of your comfort zone.
• Having your life be not as personal.
• Dealing with a lot of rejection-- from agents, from publishers, from readers.
• Having someone take a picture of you at a signing, and having no control over the picture. (So if you had your eyes half-closed, you're in the middle of saying "Right now?" and have your left eyebrow raised, you can't just delete the picture. Chances are good it'll be floating around the Internet somewhere.)
• That you will have times when you get critiques that your manuscript will be shredded.
• Finding out that your boss, your mom, your neighbor, that one girl from high school, your spouse/significant other, your kid's school teacher read your book.
• Getting bad reviews / people being vocal about everything in your book that they hated.

Some affect you more intensely than others, of course, but you were probably thinking of NONE of those things when you first had that spark to be a writer. Then, as you got further into it, you kept coming across these things that are all part and parcel to the whole writing gig! And then it goes a little like this:

A) You freak out.  
Seriously? I have to do that? 
*hyperventilating* 
I don't know if I can do that!

B) Denial.

No. 

Other people might have to deal with that, but not me. 

After a while, you realize if you really want that goal you've been staring at, this comes hand-in-hand with it.

C) Change or Accept
You either decide to give up on that goal (and change to a goal that won't require you to do the thing you're freaking out about)
OR you choose to accept it. Heck, maybe even EMBRACE it.


For me, my big freak out was school visits. On some of those things, I went through steps A, B, and C in a matter of a minutes. For the school visits, it took a couple of weeks. Panic churned in the pit of my stomach every time I thought about it. I've spent the past three days doing school visits, and I've gotta say, I freaked out way more than I needed to. It has actually been FUN! (Now mind you, I was going classroom to classroom-- not speaking to a full auditorium at a time. I'm sure there'll be more freaking out before I do my first auditorium presentation.)

I thought I had gone through steps A, B, and C on EVERYTHING. Turns out I didn't go there on the whole You-might-be-filmed-doing-a-presentation-and-then-that-presentation-might-find-its-way-online thing. (So make sure that one's not absent on your list of things you need to accept!) It's not that I didn't think it would happen..... it's that I didn't think about it at all. So step A-- the big freak out-- hit pretty hard the last couple of days. I can, with confidence, say that I've made it to step C-- I accept it.

....But that doesn't mean that step A is over. I'll admit-- I'm still freaking out a little bit. But just like everything else, I know eventually that will go away, too.

Which one has been the worst for you so far? Are there some on that list that you intentionally glazed over, because you're not ready to deal with the freak out on them yet?