What would happen if the news about rejections, bad sales, crappy reviews was simply that: news?

What if I didn’t make it mean anything?

Like…
I’m a bad writer
I’m not successful
I’m not smart enough
I’m not good enough
I can’t do it
I shouldn’t do it
I’ll never be
Respected
Admired
Loved

Holy crap. That’s quite a rabbit hole. But that’s exactly what it feels like when something happens which isn’t a yes. Bam. I am scampering down that rabbit hole, cowering, hiding wishing I could be be better, successful, smarter, etc. You get the idea.

So what would happen if I didn’t go down the rabbit hole? What would happen if that response wasn’t my go to response. What would happen if I could hear publishing events as the facts that they are and leave all my ascriptions of meaning aside? What would happen if the act of writing was simply that: Me writing. Me exploring. Me discovering. Me figuring out the next scene. The next chapter. Without the baggage of: this had better be good enough to turn the tide of publishing and my own self worth.

Yeah. That’s what I’m up to here. Unhooking the old neural pathways of making (positive and negative) meanings out of every little thing that happens around writing and landing in the discovery of me inventing a world on the page.

Yeah…