ding ding ding ding ding!!!

Here's a secret I bet none of you know: having a little exposure can lead to a lack of confidence.

"Excuse me?" I hear you saying it right now. "But you're having SUCCESS in your exposure. People like your book--or they seem to, anyway. It should give you MORE confidence."

Call me backward. For me, success/exposure is more than slightly scary, because of the follow-up: what if I can't follow up? What if I suck? What if the next book sucks? What if everyone's lying about liking my book? What if I'm ugly and fat? What if nobody comes to my book signing? What if . . . what if . . . what if . . . ?? You get the point (my husband, if he was reading this blog, would be ROLLING HIS EYES AND SIGHING LOUDLY).

Then, the inestimably smart, amazing, career-changing agent Janet Reid (can you tell I appreciate her?) posted a link to Toni McGee Causey's post about confidence on the Murderati blog. And the bell went off in my head--ding ding ding ding ding!!

See if that happens for you, too. What if I decided, every single day, to ignore those "what-ifs"?

So here's to making choices--and here's to the amazing, beautiful, funkadelic space that is the writing community on the WWW! Writers, editors, agents, publishers, marketers--we are lucky, lucky people to have such a crowd to talk with and learn from.