Sylvanus Now Contest: The doubties

Here is the next entry in the Sylvanus Now Contest sent in by my dear friend, Becca. Becca is the kind of friend I can call (I haven't yet, but know I could) at 3 a.m. (okay with the time zone difference that'd only be 10 p.m. her time, but you know what I mean) and cry and rant about some new heartache and she'd be supportive even though she'd know that in a month I'd have forgotten all about it. I miss the days when she lived closer and I could jump in my car for a 12-hour road trip to do the same. We'd sit on her front porch drinking beer and watching the river flow by.... But I digress.

Becca is also a new blogger. You can catch her at: http://jedsmommy.blogspot.com/ (or Don't get me started...)

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The Doubties
by
Becca Luczycki

I was not doing it for the attention then, and I am not now…

When I was in college, by roommate used to accuse me of saying my writing sucked and I wasn’t sure what kind of grade I would get on a paper I had just handed in, just for the attention. “You know you always do well,” she said, “Just stop saying that.” It used to piss her off because she could spend twice as much time are me and not do well.

And I did always do well. Well, a large majority of the time. But I wasn’t saying it for attention or affect (or even effect, whichever one is correct there). Every time I handed something in, the “Doubties” would immediately start to clamor at the back of my brain.
You know them, you’ve heard them too; They scratch at your cerebellum and whisper stuff like “It sucks, it really does, you just thought it was good while it was spewing out of your fingertips and into the typewriter” (Yes, I had a typewriter in college, didn’t get a computer until grad school and even then it was DOS-operated).

It still happens to me now. I finish a piece for work and the minute I hand it over to the other editors I start to get anxious, even if I sent it to a very good and honest friend and took it home for my man to read to first, and they both told me it was very good, I still worry until I see that A grade (or these days, until I see very few scribbled comments when it comes back form my colleagues.

What IS that? Why can’t I (why can’t we all) just understand that if we are doing this for a living, or hoping to one day, that we are probably pretty good at it? Why can’t we just tell ourselves, okay, it might need some revision but overall it’s pretty darn good? Why can’t we be proud of ourselves without external validation?

Geez, now I am about to hit the send key on this and I am wondering if it’s what Colleen was looking for when she started this contest, if the other blog readers will agree, if I am really supposed to participate because I write for a living but not fiction…? Anyone need any extra Doubties? I’ve got some to spare.