Girl Talk Thursday – Chicken Shit

                                                   

I’ve been thinking about participating in Girl Talk Thursday for awhile.  The problem is, I usually don’t think about it until Friday morning.  Woops!

But the topic today is something I’ve been thinking about – being a chicken.

I’m a big fat chicken about a lot of things, but there’s one thing in particular that I don’t want to be chicken about. 

That one thing is my writing.

I’ve started writing seven novels in the past twelve years.  Been passionate about them to the point that I can’t think of anything else, writing and outlining and developing characters at every spare moment. 

Inevitably, I come to a point where I want some feedback.  But I’m too chicken shit to show my writing to anyone.  The blog doesn’t count, of course, because it’s fluid and ever changing, and people who come here to read aren’t expecting works of pure genius. 

My real writing, that’s something I hope to have published some day.  I want someone to purchase one of my books, spend their precious time reading it, and come away happy that they did so.

That’s a whole lot of pressure.

I realize that what shows up on bookshelves isn’t anyone’s first draft – which is why I need feedback.  I can’t be objective when I’m neck deep in the process of developing a scene.  But I’ve always been too chicken to show anything I’ve seriously written.

Until now.

Maura is taking a look at the first few chapters of a novel I’d decided to abandon.  Something I haven’t looked at in 9 months, but that I know has potential to be something worth reading.  Something worth writing.

I’m still a chicken.  But at least, for now, I feel capable of laying some eggs.