I’ve heard of actors who have a hard time watching their own movies and singers who won’t listen to their own songs. Well, I find it very difficult to read my own work once I know it’s out there. This might seem like an amusing little quirk, but it’s almost debilitating, because there’s that pesky editing process to get through. By nature of this process, you are required to face your mistakes head on and deal with them.

I just finished up galley proofs for Unleashed, and it was all I could do to struggle through. I’m always seeing things I should’ve worded differently, thinking of things I should have added, or finding words or phrases I wish I’d left out altogether. Knowing my friends have read it–even my mom has read it–seriously freaks me out. This isn’t because it was my first book; I’ve been writing since I was a kid and I’ve always been like this. So, first book or fortieth, it won’t matter. Once my words have had another set of eyes on them, I have to force myself to read them. It’s even hard for me to read over my posts for Excerpt Monday.

I don’t want to doubt myself. I know I have a lot to learn, and I’ll never learn it all. I think I’m pretty laid back and easy going as writers go. I don’t get in a snit over editorial changes, and rejection doesn’t get me down much at all, if only because I go in expecting it. So I don’t understand why I have to have this one big, weird, almost paralyzing quirk…but it makes me want to crawl under something and not come out.