HOORAY for Friday!!!

You guys got anything good going on for the weekend?

I'm going to rest and get better. (Yeah, famous last words.)

I've read some pieces for OWW and I'm going to read some for QnI and try to get some comments out to people.

And, do the usual stuff I do on weekends.

(Oh, yeah...I said I was going to rest and get better, didn't I? Oops.)

Confidence

I'm beginning to think, on my part, that confidence is more an emotion than a belief or lack of belief in myself.

Yes, I do have a real problem with confidence that is born from problems in my childhood and in my former married life. I work at overcoming these problems every day, and I think I've made great strides.

However, having said that, I think there's definitely an emotional element to confidence--or lack of it--as well.

That emotional element is tied to many things. Where writing is concerned, some of it is tied to writing, some is not. Some is tied to events transpiring in my day to day life that either lift me up or bring me down.

Oftentimes, it's difficult to judge progress and confidence level and even quality of writing, while other times, everything seems perfectly clear.

I often wonder if this will, ultimately, keep me from succeeding.

I think I now have more confident days than I do lack of confidence days, so I guess I'm improving. :)

Confidence for me, though, doesn't equate with the blind faith and cockiness that I often see with other writers. Sometimes, that makes me wonder how they can be so sure. Sometimes, it makes me wonder if I'm a failure for not being able to see my potential for success the same way they see theirs.

I think it makes me more cautious because I want success to be something meaningful and not fleeting.

I think that, when I have it, confidence gives me peace...not blind assurance in myself, but the peace of knowing that I have the ability to continue to grow and improve and that I have the reasoning ability to work logically through a story and any problems it presents me with.

It gives me the ability to see where I've been, where I am, and where I have yet to go...and the certainty that, even if I don't know exactly how to get there yet, I can work my way into the future as I grow.

But, there are still days of doubt. Will they ever go away? Not completely, I don't think, because writing, while the love of my life, is still difficult work and there's no way to be certain of its success or whether everything that is written will ultimately work.

There's doubt inherent in the process and while the doubt may dim somewhat, I think it'll never go away completely.

And, perhaps that's a good thing. I think that, in my life, as long as there is doubt, there is extra effort involved in my work.

But, sometimes, I have to revisit the doubt and assure myself that it's subjective. Just because I doubt doesn't mean that I will fail. It doesn't mean that my efforts are in vain.

It just means that I probably have to work a little harder than most people to bolster my confidence level and assure myself that, if I continue to work hard and to grow, that chance of success is still there, waiting for me to catch up to it.

One Side Note on Confidence

One thing that really troubles me sometimes is that my ease of writing and comfort with what I'm writing is often tied to my confidence level at that given moment in time, and not to the actual quality of the writing.

Does that happen to anyone else?

Stupid Question # ...I've Lost Count

I have another stupid question for those more experienced in marketing novels than myself because I have a completed novel that I'm going to fatten up (believe it or not, it's NOT one of my trillion word novels) and query.

Do you feel that agents pigeon-hole writers with the first genre that they submit?

Let me explain why I ask.

You folks know I used to query screenplays. In screenwriting-land, if you write a great comedy, for example, and then write a great horror, it's hard to get folks to take it seriously because they know you as a great comedy writer already.

I wondered if the same was true in the publishing world.

Yes, I know that one can use pen names to write different genres. (In my case, it's different types of sub-genres. All spec fic.)

Are agents generally supportive of that? Or do they generally encourage you to stick with the first genre you submit?

Or is this another stupid question?

The Clouds Are Rolling In...

Looks like we really might have rain this weekend like they predicted. Which is a novelty, because usually, the predictions are wrong.

It's supposed to be 38 degrees tomorrow night and 36 on Sunday night, so it'll be interesting to see if we get any flurries if it does rain. Sometimes, as it approaches freezing, I know there's a little flurry activity.

However, considering that, around here, it's usually warmer when there are clouds, I'd be surprised if it's really that cold.

The clouds are awesome coming over the mountains here.

I love my office view!