Paradoxically, it's during this time that I've also felt as though I'm doing my best actual writing. I *know* that I've developed. I *know* that I've improved enormously since my first book came out in 2010, and that I will continue to improve. But.
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I won't go into the specifics of what happened, or with whom; it's not relevant here. But since then, I've been absolutely paralysed. The experience was so awful that I'm constantly in the shadow of it. I'm terrified of a repeat performance. I can't be treated like that again.
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Even typing this, my pulse and breathing are altered. Just. I'm compartmentalised by nature, so it doesn't hang over me day to day, but when I think about publishing - when I think about needing to put my work out there - I freeze up.
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It's so, so stressful, and of course, the nature of the industry is that it's largely verboten to talk about your bad industry experiences with other people in the industry. It makes you a complainer. It is Not Done.
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But I need to talk about it, if only in this very vague way, because I need to try and progress past it, too. This thread is my compromise. For the sake of my mental health, I *need* to be able to be open about the things that impact it, and why.
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And I also need to remind myself - in public, where I can't pretend I never said it or believed it - that I've had setbacks before, and doubtless will again, but that persistence, a willingness to improve and a bone-deep love of writing will get me through them.
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My final year ofschool, I was taking more subjects than anyone else in my grade. I was depressed, insomniac - and determined to write. As tired, as broken, as busy as I was, I still had a printout of my then-manuscript with me, editing on the train and under my desk at school.
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A friend who knew me then, still one of my best, has said he always marvelled at how determined I was then to be a writer; how core to me it was, in the face of everything else. How it never wavered. That's who I need to be again: the stubborn girl on the train, red pen in hand.
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And I will be. I will be. I will be. So fucking help me, I will channel the spirit of Miranda's Hamilton and write that shit into existence, because I don't know any other way to be.
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When I can't write - when I'm afraid to write; when I'm paralysed by the fear that my writing won't succeed or matter - it's like I'm absent within myself. I curl up in some fundamental way, sinking into a self-made carapace of procrastination and self-deluding bullshit.
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And I don't want to do that anymore. I want to acknowledge what I'm afraid of, and name it, and move on from it, or I'll be stuck in my own shelled head forever.
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So. I'm not really sure how to wrap this up, because there's not a neat conclusion to things like this. I know my own habits of fooling myself; that doesn't make me immune to them. But I'm going to try, because I have to. Because to do anything less would be a disservice.
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Growing up with creative aspirations, it's easy to assume that there's going to come a point when you know you've Made It; when you're secure in yourself and never doubt thereafter. But that's bullshit, I think. Even the best artists in the world have moments of self-doubt.
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"Stay afraid, but do it anyway." That's what Carrie Fisher said, and in honour of her glitter-flinging, bird-flipping spirit, that's what I'm going to do. Stay afraid, but do it anyway.
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