There's a moment when you finish a manuscript where you feel like a genius. A genuine creative force. Then you reread it and wonder if you've lost your mind.
That's where I've been for a while. I've done the revisions. I've read it through more times than I care to count. And yet, for months, I couldn't bring myself to send it to my editor. My April deadline came and went. Then May. Here we are in June.
It's fear. Pure and simple. When you're an independent author, you pour a year or more into a single project. Sending it out for review is the first moment someone outside your head tells you whether it works. That's terrifying in a way that's hard to explain to people who haven't done it.
But I sent it. It's with Christopher now. And I'm trying to remember a few things that help:
Writing something else beforehand gives you distance. Every draft makes you a better writer regardless of how it's received. And tools like Grammarly, Scrivener, and Dragon Naturally Speaking exist for a reason — use them.
More updates when I hear back. Fingers crossed.