Over the weekend I finished editing a story that I will be sending to an anthology, its with my beta readers now. It’s a rather scary wait to see if I hit any of the marks on the story that I was aiming for.
Sending it away had been harder than I had thought it would be. I have self-published a short story before, I had thought I would be past the nervous jitters as doubt creeps through my mind. Did I do X right? Is the X character the same through the book? Too many questions and doubts.
I have found myself trying to remember if I had the same doubts last time. Did I just forget? It’s amazing what the mind keeps and discards. Will I look back in six months, six years, and think was I this nervous then, or does it start to go away?
Then I started thinking a little doubt is not a bad thing. It means that I am open to a comment when someone says something, rather than sure that I am the next best thing since sliced bread. So I am left nervous and slightly confused while I wait, trying my very best not to read the short story again so when I do get to my last edit its fresh, and clear in my mind, and I can take the comments with a clear head.
While I wait, I am still working on new short stories, and hopefully over the week I will also be able to start to edit another one of the short stories as well, no deadline on any of these though. This 10th February is the submission deadline, so as soon as I have the details back from my betas its getting picked up again.