Anxiety dreams
I had them the day the Salon article went live but I also had a high fever so I was fever dreaming, too. I kept waking myself up talking out loud. Those dreams were about categorizing scads and scads of internet journals, essays and emails. Not surprising. But the night before, when it had just gone live but hadn’t been officially launched (i.e., through their premium member newsletter), I had the usual math dream. You know, the one where I realize I’ve missed all these math classes and am late for the final. That, my friends, is a dream about feeling like a fraud who is about to be found out.
Then last night I woke up realizing I was having fever-less categorization dreams. This, I think, has to do with working on my chapter last night and realizing I had to rewrite the Table of Contents outline and feeling worried about it all again. (Later I dreamt about going to the movies with Becca and that was much nicer. Plus we were driving these motorized yellow three-wheelers that looked like jogging strollers and we got to wear cool leather driving gloves, too.)
Originally I planned to tackle each chapter as a longer feature article for a typical parenting-type mag. But I realized that this wouldn’t be the book I really want to write and I started drawing something up a little more personal and a little bit more complicated. thus the anxiety, I guess. I’m putting this down because I was reading a few blogs where people were wanting to start submitting their writing but were terrified and felt like frauds and the anxiety was ratcheting them through the roof so I wanted to say that I have that, too, and my friends who write books have it and maybe that’s just how it is. In other words, it doesn’t actually mean anything about your talent or ability — it’s just that it’s scary to put yourself out there. No, it’s terrifying to put yourself out there.
I think the reason I had a more simple table of contents before was because it would be easier and thus less threatening and thus less hurtful to get rejections over something that I kept an emotional distance from. But I think the simple version has less of a shot at getting published and if it did get published, I think it would be less useful and so less well-received. I guess I am stuck writing the one I started working on last night and frankly, I don’t see the anxiety dreams ending.
I keep thinking, man, if a simple Salon essay could make me this crazy, how can I handle more success? Who knew that success was harder to live with than failure? I mean, if you have failure then you don’t have to read the letters to the editor (and the ones that were lovely gave me way more anxiety than the ones that were either critical of adoption or were totally off-topic — it’s that fraud fear working again) and you don’t feel greedy for more success thus generating the fear that this simple Salon essay is your apex and that it’s all downhill from there. With failure you can shake your fist and say, “I’ll show them all!” But an acceptance? A new publication that I care about? Dear lord, what if they hate me???
(I used to think that if I just broke Salon that I could die happy — this was 5+ years ago when I first started feeling serious about freelancing — and it turns out not; I want more.)
Writing all of this down makes me feel calmer. Looking at it in black and white it all sounds manageable and just kinda the way things go. You know Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has been public about his acting insecurity, is saying right now, “Oh GOD, how will I follow this up???” But not Reese. You know Reese just got on the phone with her agent and said she expected a raise from here on out. She’s all no-nonsense like that. Not me though. I’m way more Philip-ish.
i’m definitely scared of putting myself out there too. can relate to the fraud thing. and wondering why i would. what’s the point? am i looking for people to say how good it is? why? and then what comes next?
problem with these creative type things — no clear cut path of what is next, what to expect, and why. in my mind anyway.
(not sure any of that makes sense. and i’m talking about art/painting as opposed to writing.)
I never ever ever read commentary on what I write when I write something published (I mean like not my blog. Like a real publication someone gets to tell me yay or nay about). I don’t care if it’s bad or good. I can’t read it.
Thanks for writing this, Dawn. I stopped writing, well trying-to-write-for-publication, back when I got pregnant with my 20-month-old. I definitely have less free time now than I did before but I think I want to jump back in. A little bit at least. I’m scared to even think about trying. I need to get over that I think.
“I’m putting this down because I was reading a few blogs where people were wanting to start submitting their writing but were terrified and felt like frauds and the anxiety was ratcheting them through the roof so I wanted to say that I have that, too, and my friends who write books have it and maybe that’s just how it is. In other words, it doesn’t actually mean anything about your talent or ability — it’s just that it’s scary to put yourself out there. No, it’s terrifying to put yourself out there.”
This makes me wonder if my non-parenting blog is one of them (Decomposition?) because I’ve been wrestling with exactly this since January, when I started submitting again–and trying to tell myself exactly the same thing. That fear is good because it means I’m risking something real, and that’s where the good writing comes from, so I just have to deal with it–but ugh.
Anyway, thanks! Whether it was from my own neuroses or someone else’s, my insecurities thank you.