Recently, I’ve had several of you ask me how it’s going with my novel…and where it’s going.  So I’ll tell you exactly where I am and how it’s going…

My blogging partner, Julie, and I have set several dates for us to be able to have our novels edited enough to turn them over to the other.  But the problem is, we keep pushing them back.  Now, we have a set deadline with each other…it’s a drop dead, deadline..no backing out.  Even if our novels haven’t been touched one little iota (and mine hasn’t) we have to turn them over to each other to read, critique and help improve.

I have to tell you, I spent one month…27 days actually, pouring my heart and soul into this novel of mine which I just named “The Devil is in Our Family Now” and I can not make myself go back to it.  I am terrified of it…yep, me ~ a honey badger…I’m terrified.  What if it truly sucks?  What am I going to do then?  I spent 27 days and countless hours typing, thinking, dreaming and living these characters and I am terrified to think that the whole thing is a complete and total piece of shit!  And it probably is, but I’ll never know unless I can screw up the courage to go back to an re-read the words I wasn’t allowed to edit in the month of November.

I have until February 2, yep Groundhog Day, to make some sense out of what I wrote or I’ll have to turn “The Devil” over to Julie untouched and unedited…CRAP! You all know, my kiddos were my biggest supporters…especially Claire, who lovingly colored in every single step on my “thermometer of achievement,” marking off every 5,000 words on my way to the supreme goal of 50,000.  And now, I am letting them down by being a scaredy-cat.  What kind of mom am I to let fear of my written words keep me from looking back at what I’ve already accomplished?  I don’t want to be known as “scaredy-mom.”  I want the kids to know I can take the bull by the horns, look it dead in the eye and say “BRING IT ON!”  OK, or at least be able to go back and make some sense out of what I’ve written.

I’ve got lots of work to do and lots of fear to overcome but I have to do it for the love of my children….