Before each round of Author Mentor Match (a program that matches kidlit and adult writers with mentors–next round open Feb 13th, 2020!) the previously selected mentees volunteer to do query critiques for hopefuls. I always do this, because I love giving back, and I’ve gotten so much out of being a mentee myself.
This round I offered to critique for two people. One got right back to me with her material ASAP. The other said hello but was taking time to send their materials. And a part of me wondered, Are they nervous?
Maybe they were afraid to share. Maybe they were worried what I’d think of it. Maybe they were furiously polishing up their material, afraid to get it wrong.
Don’t be nervous! I instinctively thought, then I caught myself. Being nervous is not in and of itself a bad thing. It’s normal to be nervous.
When I sent my first queries to real, live agents I was so scared. Terrified of messing up. I researched the hell out of the whole process (as I am wont to do) and prepared a bunch of email drafts, meticulously triple-checking them. Anything to avoid actually hitting Send.
But Robin Lovett was at writer’s group that day and she encouraged me to do it. Just get it over with. Make it happen.
I hit Send.
I was still a nervous wreck. Just like I was giving presentations in school, and reading my work out loud, and the first time I passed a full novel manuscript over to someone else.
Being nervous isn’t bad. Letting your nerves get in the way of what you really want to do is bad.
It would be weird if you weren’t nervous! I thought about the person whose materials I was waiting to critique, then caught myself again. Because that’s a lie. I’m rarely as nervous about submitting now as I was when I first started.
Let me tell you, I got a lot better about sending queries, and entering contests, and sharing my work with others.
I play a game with myself. I’m allowed to be nervous and nitpicky in the lead-up to sending. A little stressing out now can mean you catch typos and things you simply couldn’t recognize until you imagined someone else reading it for the first time. So I do my best to make my entry a good one. I hit send.
Then I forget the entire thing exists.
That’s right. I don’t check my email obsessively because I pretend that I didn’t enter. The contest doesn’t exist. The agent doesn’t have my query. None of that is happening, and I can go back to whatever else I need to do to stay busy and distracted.
Why? Because it’s 100% outside of my control at that point. Worrying about it after you hit Send is a waste of energy. You no longer have the power to change it. (The odds of you making a massive, critical change in the last five minutes before hitting Send are also minor, so hit Send already.)
This is remarkably effective. The nervousness dissipates as I throw myself into the next thing. (If you’re querying, work on a new project. It is the best cure.) And when I do hear back, I’m always a little surprised. “Oh, right, I hit Send on that, didn’t I?” If something good comes back, I’m pleasantly surprised. If not, I can shrug it off, because I wasn’t all that invested in the outcome.
The nerves, the fear, the anxiety, those are an instinctive response. Your brain is warning you that danger lurks. It wants you to be ready for a saber-tooth tiger. Your brain is still running software from hundreds of thousands of years ago. It’s really hard to turn off instinct that’s embedded in your operating system for so long.
The fact that you may get nervy is not a problem.
How you handle the nerves makes all the difference.
Do the scary thing anyway. Seize opportunity. Don’t let your nervousness hold you back from reaching for what you want.
So, I totally get why the person I was critiquing for might’ve taken a while to actually hit Send. And I can say that with practice and the right mindset, the nervousness alleviates.
Ultimately they did send me their pages. Turns out they’d had unavoidable Life Stuff that got in the way. Shit happens.
And then they rocked their revisions so hard.
You can, too. Go forth and do battle.
This round I offered to critique for two people. One got right back to me with her material ASAP. The other said hello but was taking time to send their materials. And a part of me wondered, Are they nervous?
Maybe they were afraid to share. Maybe they were worried what I’ll think of it. Maybe they were furiously polishing up their material, afraid to get it wrong.
“Don’t be nervous!” I instinctively thought, then I caught myself. Being nervous is not in and of itself a bad thing. It’s normal to be nervous.
When I sent my first queries to real, live agents I was so scared. Terrified of messing up. I researched the hell out of the whole process (as I am wont to do) and prepared a bunch of email drafts, meticulously triple-checking them. Anything to avoid actually hitting Send.
But Robin Lovett was at writer’s group that day and she encouraged me to do it. Just get it over with. Make it happen.
I hit Send.
I was still a nervous wreck. Just like I was giving presentations in school, and reading my work outloud, and the first time I passed a full novel manuscript over to someone else.
Being nervous isn’t bad. Letting your nerves get in the way of what you really want to do is bad.
“It would be weird if you weren’t nervous!” I thought about the person whose materials I was waiting to critique, then caught myself again. Because that’s a lie. I’m rarely as nervous about submitting now as I was when I first started.
Let me tell you, I got a lot better about sending queries, and entering contests, and sharing my work with others.
I play a game with myself. I’m allowed to be nervous and nitpicky in the lead-up to sending. A little stressing out now can mean you catch typos and things you simply couldn’t recognize until you imagined someone else reading it for the first time. So I do my best to make my entry a good one. I hit send.
Then I forget the entire thing exists.
That’s right. I don’t check my email obsessively because I pretend that I didn’t enter. The contest doesn’t exist. The agent doesn’t have my query. None of that is happening, and I can go back to whatever else I need to do to stay busy and distracted.
Why? Because it’s 100% outside of my control at that point. Worrying about it after you hit Send is a waste of energy. You no longer have the power to change it. (The odds of you making a massive, critical change in the last five minutes before hitting Send are also minor, so hit Send already.)
This is remarkably effective. The nervousness dissipates as I throw myself into the next thing. (If you’re querying, work on a new project. It is the best cure.) And when I do hear back, I’m always a little surprised. “Oh, right, I hit Send on that, didn’t I?”