Got Ugly Voices? Kick Their Teeth In!

It still happens, every single time. Whether I'm submitting a poem to a contest, writing a query for my latest revised novel, or pressing "send" on a job proposal through a free-lance writing site, I hear those ugly voices.

You know them. If you are human, you have heard them yourself.

Mine are vicious. They say things like, "You know nobody's going to hire you," and "It's not like your novel is even worth reading," and "Your poetry/writing/blogging/hair/talent/voice/etc. just SUCKS!" They are insidious, taking little fears and blowing them up into cataclysms, trying to convince me that this one e-mail submission will absolutely RUIN my chances of EVER making it in the real publishing world.

Yours are unique to you, I am certain, but they cover the same sort of ground, saying everything they can to tear down your dreams, to keep you from taking chances, to make you crawl into a fetal position on the living room rug and stay there for the rest of your life.

They will drive you insane.

The solution? You KNOW what it is! You have mad karate skills, honed through practice and perseverance. So use those skills, and beat the snot out of these voices. Kick them in the teeth. Pull out their hair. Punch them again and again and again until they fall down or hop out of the ring. This is war.

As they grin at you, slicing at you with fear and criticism, bobbing and weaving, talking their trash, instead of trying out that fetal position, do the very thing they say you can't do. Submit your work. Finish that supposedly "crappy" novel. Write another sucky poem, and another, and another. Practice singing until you are hoarse. Play piano until your hands cramp. Try for that out-of-reach job. Kick them in the teeth enough times, and their teeth will either break into little pieces or they will simply GO AWAY.

Don't go insane. Don't let the voices take over. Don't be afraid. Embrace your fear, accept it for what it is--fear--and go on. I feel that fear every time, but I've decided that the more times I feel it, the more I'm working towards my dreams. I do submit carefully, but the point is that I still submit.

Funny word, submit. I wonder what I'm really submitting to...

Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Contest

If you haven't submitted your complete novel to the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Contest yet, you only have a few more days to do it. The submission period ends February 5, or once 5,000 entries have been received in a given category (there are two: Adult and YA).

I just uploaded mine and submitted, and I'm glad I did. Sure, I might not even make it to the next level, but every time I send my work out, it gets easier. I spent more than a week revising and re-revising my next-to-next-to-last chapter (the climax), trying to get it where it needed to be. I've revised this novel at least 25 times, but probably more that this, for its first version was completed in 2003, just six months after I graduated with my doctorate. I bought myself a used laptop as a graduation present, and it was the first novel I wrote on it.

Is it ready to publish? I have no idea. Countless people have read it--some have read more than one version--and I have to admit it might not be ready for another ten years (*gasp*), but I'll likely not give up on it.

Now it's your turn. Do you have a completed work? SEND IT IN!!!! Don't wait! Don't sit on your hands any longer. Don't doubt.

Okay, doubt if you wish. But send it in anyway. What do you have to lose?