Suck It Up and Publish

Koenig's steam-powered printing press, 1814

"The Tragedy of Anonymous Comment Threads" by David Hoffman at Concurring Opinions" »

This is a great post about the pitfalls of living in fear of rejection. While Professor Hoffman, whose Corporations class I took, focuses on the academic culture of rejection-fear he sees reflected in blog comments, his insight applies just as well to fiction.

I’ve recently started looking at some of the vignettes I wrote last year. I’m also talking to a friend and former writing partner about restarting our exchange of criticism.

I’ve been nervous to show anyone my recent fiction because I haven’t written new material in such a long time. It’s a chicken/egg fear loop like the one Hoffman discusses in his post. As he says, the only rational way to deal with that fear is to act as if it doesn’t exist.

That's why I cleaned up a story I wrote in college and made it available in ebook format at leanpub.com/threedays for free. I'm terrified. After all, I wrote the story, a tragic time travel/pandemic/corporate government love story called Three Days, around 2004 and 2005. It's an exercise in character development and dialogue, with a plot essentially pieced together from several well-known stories and movies in the same sci-fi vein.

But if I don't put that one out there, what will I ever put out there? Professor Hoffman is right: the worst shame isn't in rejection, it's in standing still.