Pitch Wars Diaries Day 0: Lettin' Go Is Hard To Do

I submitted my Pitch Wars manuscript today.

Actually, submitted is probably the wrong word. Saying I submitted my manuscript would be inaccurate. That implies that I opened the page on Brenda Drake's site, attached my documents, picked out my mentors, and pressed submit. That was not the case. First, I spent a solid 48 hours in a cocoon of my own anxiety. I then needled every single one of my critique partners (who have awe-inspiring patience) with a copy of my first chapter, begging them to spot all the flaws. When they didn't spot any flaws, I insisted they were mistaken, and asked them to make absolutely sure that everything was perfect. Following this, I nearly vomited up my sushi dinner. I went to bed, and woke up in an equal panic. I begged strangers to double check my query, and consequently started sobbing in my bed. Only after I listened to "Hard Rock Hallelujah" on full volume a solid 20 times was I able to summon the courage to submit.

My rough mental state at the moment.

This was about two hundred times harder than I expected it to be. I thought I was ready to submit. I wasn't. Every time I came close to entering, my heart would freeze, my hands would clam up, and everything about me screamed "NO." I've had a hate-hate relationship with my anxiety since I was old enough to spell "anxiety," and it decided that now was the time to hop onto my desk, bring me a cup of arsenic-laced coffee, and not leave until I conceded all possibility of forward momentum to it. I like to call these the panic worms. They get into you, and wriggle into places where you think they can't go.

Except with fewer tusks.

This is the first time I've shown my writing to strangers, ever. I picked out my mentors and had a few conversations on Twitter, but they're not people who I've known for years. I smother my writing, because I feel like, if I show it to people, they'll confirm what my panic worms are telling me. If my writing is perfect, I'll be invulnerable, but what if it isn't perfect? What if they don't like my characters' names? What if they think I over-describe everything? What if they hate it, or worse, it just doesn't inspire any reaction? I always think that this time, I'll be able to be confident in my own writing, and it just never happens. Even when people say that they like my writing, I don't believe them. I think there must be something they're missing. And the worst part is that I need to fight it every step of the way. No matter how often I tell myself that my writing is good and worth sharing, the what ifs plague me. I tell them to shut up, and they, like my students, decide to react by getting even louder. That's what they were doing today.

And then I sent it in. And the green-lettered confirmation message came up. And the what ifs, and the panic worms, and the self-doubt, all vanished. And now I feel like this.

Pretty much this giddy. I genuinely can't believe I managed to send it off.

To me, Pitch Wars (and publishing as a whole) is like extreme mountaineering. A typical analogy of this form would go that writing a story is like climbing a mountain, and when you reach the summit and finish, you can look down and look at all the progress you've made. To me, the task of climbing begins months, even years, before you even set foot on a trail. You have to buy the equipment. You have to book time off work. You have to do some physical training (mild for some people, likely extreme for me). But, most importantly, you have to convince yourself that you are able to climb a mountain. It's the first step, and it's the most important one. You need to look at those giant hunks of rock and ice littered with corpses and flags, and tell yourself that you, yes you, can be one of the people insane and driven enough to make it to the absolute top. You need to convince yourself that this mountain was set out for you to conquer.

Right now, I'm at base camp. My boots are strapped on. I have a more experienced sherpa by my side (Bryanne Green, who is subbing to YA and basically saved my query from being a horrible, illegible mess...you should check out her site). And I've got my eyes turned to the sky, and all I can see before me is Everest, or Kilimanjaro, or Alishan, or McKinley. And I'm struck with wonder by every crevasse, every trail, every tree. By allowing my story to fly, I get to take in this view, full of the knowledge that somehow, some way, I'm going to make it to the top. The panic worms are locked in a jar at home, right next to the jar of Szechuan peppercorns. This is my story, and hopefully, it will be my mountain. But even if I don't get to the top, man, what a view.