My Non-Discovery Discovery

Yep, you read that right. This week I made a non-discovery discovery. Because it was something I already knew about myself. However, I was unaware of how much this was a part of my personality.

I am not a patient person.
And I'm obessive.
And a *bit* paranoid.

Yeah. All of these things I already knew. But, over the last couple weeks I have realized that they are more dominant qualities than I knew. When I sent Bound in Ink to Aubrey and Andrea a couple weeks ago when I finished it, I was insanely excited. I had finished! It was ready for someone other than me to read it! This was a big deal!

And then time passed. Aubrey is working full time and taking care of 3 small boys. She's a very busy girl. Andrea was on a family vacation in the woods and then returned to find her work was in utter chaos without her. (She's pretty important to the flow and sanity at her work.) So they haven't really had a chance to read it. I understand this. I don't even resent this. They are busy ladies with many things on their plates. However, this does not stop me from having to remind myself on almost an hourly basis to not text them and ask how far along they are in the MS, even though I know they haven't read anything since the last time I asked them. That would be stalkerish and creepy and obsessive. And I am not stalkerish or creepy or obsessive. Of course not.

So, this last week at the weekly family dinner with Sparky's family, I mentioned to one of my SIL's that I had finished my MS. She was super excited for me and asked if she could read it. I said sure, since she's a big reader, and the more constructive criticism, the better. Enter my other two SIL's who also said they would love to read it. I'm thrilled that they want to read it! They seemed genuinely excited and enthusiastic about it. Warm fuzzies filled my heart and that night I send to them.

It has now been 5 days (I know, I can see your eyes rolling at me already) and I haven't heard a word from anyone. Now, a rational and patient person would understand that it takes TIME to read a book that's just over 58k words. Especially when TRIPS and KIDS and JOBS are involved. But I am obviously not a rational or patient person. This is where my thoughts have been for the last 2 days.

"They hate it. It's awful and stupid but they all like me enough that they can't tell me that so they are avoiding me and saying nothing."

"It's boring. No one has been able to get very far into it because it wasn't intersesting enough and so they can't tell me what they think about something they don't even want to read anymore."

*starts obessessing about MS and storyline* "It's cliche. I'm completely unorginal and I have no idea why I thought this was a good story."

*starts zoning out and visualizing future conversations of sadness and failure with said family and friends* "I am so embarrassed! I was proud and excited to share and now they all look at me with pity in their eyes because I'm too blind to see that I have no talent for this! My dream is dead!! I'm a complete hack!!!"

*sits on the couch, eats cookies, and whines on Twitter*

Yeah....pretty pathetic isn't it? I recieved some sweet comments on twitter telling me to hang in there, and Andrea talked me down after I text bombed her hysterically about all my insecurties, which helped me calm down a bit after my 2 days of freaking out. But it gave me a very sad and slightly worrisome picture of the future.

I am so screwed when I end up sending anything in to agents/publishers. To the people in my life, I apologize in advance, because judging from this experience, it's going to be ugly.

Has anyone else suffered from this crisis of self-confidence? Was it bad or do I just have a flair for the dramatic? How did you pull yourself out of the obsession hole and focus on something else?