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Today J.R. Wagner, author of the newly released Exiled, joins us with a guest post on the emotional trails and traits of writers. I understand the self-doubt and worry J.R. mentions–I think many of us have been there. Welcome, JR!

By J. R. Wagner

A neurotic writer? Preposterous!

Please. I’ve been exposed to enough of ‘us’ to realize that I am far from the only writer who suffers from, as the dictionary so nicely puts it:

feelings of anxiety, obsessional thoughts, compulsive acts, and physical
complaints without objective evidence of disease, in various degrees and
patterns, dominate the personality

At the end I’d tack on ‘while writing’.

Think about it. Maybe it doesn’t happen during your first draft, maybe it does, but it happens. You start to second-guess yourself. Is this the right way to express what I’m trying to express? Am I really using the character’s true voice when I write this? Does this word even make sense? Does this sound too much like (insert a well-known book title here)? And so the questioning and self-doubt has begun (along with the anxiety).

Is this where it ends? Hell no. You’re just warming up.

You have a draft and you’re ready to share it with some close friends or peers. You think to yourself, (on more than one occasion) is this really worth sharing? Maybe I should do another round of edits before I show it to anyone. What if they think it’s terrible? Have I wasted my time writing this? Maybe I should change that scene in chapter twelve first. Did that dog really need to get hit by the car?

Eventually, most likely after another round of edits (or two or three or four), you ‘man up’ and share your work. You’ve been writing for a while so it isn’t as bad as the first time you shared your work with someone…is it? If you’ve published, there are expectations of higher quality. (Maybe you’d better run over it one more time.)

While they’re reading it, you have to fight the urge to check in and see how things are going. You may find yourself doing some unusual activity to keep your mind off of how far along your reader has gotten. You were really psyched about the first chapter and she blew through it without saying a word. Did she hate it? Why wouldn’t she say something –anything? You’ve put countless hours into this and she has the nerve to remain silent! Perhaps you should re-think your friendship. Maybe she won’t get a copy of your next project. Look at her…sitting there… reading …with that arrogant expression on her face. What does she know about writing anyway?

You get it back. Finally, someone else has read and commented on your work. Was it positive? Negative? Riddled with change suggestions? Maybe they didn’t say anything at all when they finished and you have to pry an opinion from them –what a nightmare that would be!

Somehow, you’ve been convinced that your work is good enough to publish. Time for another round of insecurity and doubt as the rejection letters start piling up –all based on your one page query. How do you base an opinion of someone’s work after reading just one page? You get single phrase replies like ‘Not for us�