The free fall.

I have a friend who skydives. It's part of his job so he doesn't do it as a hobby. As a matter of fact, it's the part of his job that he dislikes the most. 

He loathes the feeling of getting into the plane, knowing that soon he will be hurling himself from it. 

There's nothing he hates more than the wind savagely whipping at his face as he stands by the door, staring down at the earth. 

And he resents taking the final plunge, watching it all coming closer and closer at a frenetic pace. So, what does he do to counter all of this? He does what he can to negate the risks by packing his own parachute. 

But here comes the problem: he packs and re-packs and re-packs it again and again, his stomach getting more and more queasy with every round of re-packing, until he's ready to board the plane. 

Why?

Because packing a parachute properly is critical to it actually opening and performing the way it should. Heaven forbid that it doesn't open when the ripcord is pulled. Can you blame the poor fellow for driving himself insane every time he unpacks the darned thing?

What does this have to do with anything? If you think about it, parachuting is just like writing. I do what I can behind the scenes, tooling and re-tooling my work, feeding self-doubt at every turn. I second guess everything: names, places, situations. The last thing I want is to present work that feels insincere or contrived. 

So I do like Coco Chanel says and I remove one thing... and then one more thing from my book before publishing it. 

And it turns out, that one thing I've removed, is the thing that so many people tell me they wish was in the book!

Sigh. 

So, what do I do? I'll rewrite and reinsert the segment I removed and I'll learn to ignore Coco whispering in my ear. Because, going with your gut and having confidence in your work is the most amazing feeling there is. Free-falling into the world of self-publishing is liberating. It has validated me in a way I didn't know was possible. All of these emails and messages from readers admonishing me when I admit that I purposely took out some segments is so inspiring to me. 

I wake up each day with renewed purpose, knowing that I can be a good writer once I trust in myself. I can't thank each of you enough for having the guts to call me out on some of my decisions. 

So I'll take this chance to give some great advice to all of my fellow indie writers. 

“Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.” 

― Coco Chanel

Hey... Coco can't be wrong all of the time.