Getting Over Fears

For the longest time, I was afraid to publicly publish my works. It was a combination of things: a lot of it was my mother telling me that people would steal my ideas. She also told me a lot about the California Raisins. (It’s related, I think, to why I hoard paper. It doesn’t help that the whole identity theft thing has kicked in as of late. That’s a digression.) I was also afraid that people would reject the things that I’d written and think that they were bad or horrible or no good.

Then one day I started to share my fanfiction. People liked it. They loved it. People started asking me for more. I found out a few years ago that a story I thought I’d lost was loved so much by another person that they archived it on their site. I started sharing my original stories, about my mythology, and people created fanart.

For awhile, I lost track of who and where I was, and I stopped writing.

I’m writing again now. I’m starting to share again, too. I feel like a baby horse who was just born, but has to learn to walk as soon as she can. I am trying things out, shakily, but then getting better at them with practice. I am learning to share with others again, too.

It’s nice so far. I started by sharing with friends – a safe choice – and now I’m sharing again with strangers. But this time, instead of Shameru Mizunori, Tearyne Glover’s name is attached to it. I’m hoping to get the short novella finished, so I can edit it and perfect it for my audience. Shortly thereafter, I’d like to make it into a visual novel.

I’m excited. A lot of the time, I am scared. I don’t want to work on it. What if I ruin it? What if people don’t like it? But when I hear that chorus starting in my head, I have to immediately shut it out. I have to tell myself, the little filly who is trying to learn to walk, to keep walking. If I ever want to be able to gallop and clear high hurdles, I have to learn how to walk and get good at it.