Why am I such a wimp???

This is the mantra that's been going through my head for days now.

"Why am I such a wimp?"

Normally I can never be categorized as one but it's the ugly truth, People. I'm a sad pathetic sack who is so scared of rejection that she refuses to realize her dream. What dream are we talking of? Why exactly am I a wimp, you may wonder. Oh there are so many things to be listed here that my normally long blogs will become just that bit longer and tiresome. So I won't list them all and instead speak of my one and only dream: to become a published author.

I've walked around with a jump drive (while mindfully maintaining an external hard drive at home) containing all my drivel since I realized how handy jump drives are. There are books upon books, pages upon pages of thoughts and stories which I feel would be publishing worthy. If bored, I will pop the kitchy lil toy into any USB port and edit, read, revise, draft. I am the most blissful during those moments when writers block is a distant memory and words flow from the brain, through my arms, to the fingers, onto the keyboard and magically appear on the screen.

Here's the fear. What if...just, what if all that I'm going on and on about isn't really...anything? What if I've managed to delude myself all these years into believing that anything I put down on paper is worth readying? What if my friends are really just being good friends (and enablers) by gushing over how wonderful my writing is when in reality it is at worst a sucky effort towards greatness, at best marginally amusement worthy but most certainly dollar store bound ?

I fear the truth, I know. To be honest, I've feared truth before but I've also been brave enough to face it. My bravery stops here.

The idea of my "books" being in the hands of some random person is terrifying to me. What will he/she have to say about hours of work? Will they make some sort of unfeeling, unthinking comment that my writing lacks characters development, originality or that my plots are childish, boring and the rantings of a woman who is better off copying recipes then creating her own thoughts, perhaps even *gasp*, that I'm a delusional writer (on par with those folks who audition for American Idol and while the rest of the world is cringing at their attempt to sing, they hear themselves as a wannabe Alicia Keys, Mary J or even a Lata Mangeshkar)? Will he/she take one of my beloved characters and reduce them to trite strings of verbs, nouns, adjectives and non-sense?

Even when I'm at the pique of my writing, I still feel no pull towards jumping onto the net and reaching out to an editor. What if my fears about my writing is substantiated? What then? Where do I run to? How do I gather the fragments of my life after such a catastrophe and move on?

No, these fears are deep routed and for now, unshakable. That doesn't mean I do not fantasize that one day a glorious glossy hardcover book with my name splashed across the front and millions carrying it to and from work, in the metro, reading in parks, at coffee houses or engrossed in my tales during a long airplane trek, will not come to pass.

Hope, after all, is the flip side of fear, no?