Nerves

As a teenager, my mother insisted that if I wanted to keep a horse, I had to learn to rodeo like all the other good little Texas kids. I'm not affected with an ego, quite the contrary, but I was darn good with the horses. What I wasn't good at was mastering my nerves before I had to go in to run barrels and the like. I got all to good at psyching myself out. I'm still very good at it.

I had hoped that as I got older, I might grow out of it, but that's not the case. You see, I just submitted my first short story for a contest. It freaked me out a little bit to do it too. I had an "oh hell what have you done" moment after I hit the send key. I thought I might even hurl on my keyboard.

But, I took the high road. Instead, I opened up my word document and started to write. Writer's write. If that's what I really want to be "when I grow up" then that's what I too should be doing. After all, I've already hit the magical little send key, what's there to be worried about?

If you are reading this, and I hope you are... Please comment your own first submission horror stories. It doesn't have to be a contest, maybe you just finally stepped out of your safety bubble and shared your work with people you didn't know, or perhaps it was people you did. There will be no judgment here, I just hope you know that no matter what stage of your writing journey that you might be in, you are not alone.