Ok, I don’t know if I am alone in this…but it’s super hard to read your own writing sometimes, there is something weird about seeing the things you wrote, your complex word vomit, all edited nicely and laid out in a book form. Somehow holding your own work and reading it again is almost as if your reading someone else’s work. It feels you are not really or could not really be the author of said book and whomever you are reading is very good at writing, because you’re enjoying it.
Now imagine that same feeling but place on top of it the fact that you see someone else in your home or family circle reading your writing. It almost feels like sitting there waiting for your English teacher to grab out good old red sharpie number 4 and start hacking away at your writing. But, instead they just sit, turning pages, with the silence in the room driving you mentally insane. You want to know what they think! In fact its almost painful to wait for them to say if its good, instead of channeling your inner oracle trying to discern every little utterance of hmmm….
I think writers are sometimes unable to see the wonder in what they are creating. We always seem to forget what we wrote somehow, disconnected from it as we typed, and when presented with it, it’s like something new has been placed in our mind. The writing process complete, it gives us a sense of something that we should be extremely proud of. I have a great difficulty with this, but as I read my own work to my child, and hear the giggles and laughter, I realize that I am not a terrible writer. Children are the best at not hiding their feelings and I think they are a good metric for determining if your intended writing is effectual.
Perhaps what I am trying to say, is that we need to be less critical of ourselves, and less worried about what the reader will ‘think’. We wrote these works for someone and that someone is out there. I think sometimes the shear act of creating is something almost so much a part of our nature that we forget that sharing that creation imparts all that we put into it.
So sit back author, let them read, let them take the adventure you did, stop analyzing every hmmm or fold of a book corner, and embrace the fact that you created something wonderful and mystical and there it is right there with your name on it. You did it! You wrote a book, you got it published, now let them enjoy!
