I Know You Deepest Secret Fear

I love The Doors. And, yes, I know they’re corny. I know they’re ridiculous. I know they’re easily mockable. I know they take themselves too seriously. I know their lyrics are not always as smart as they think they are. I know all these things and I love this band anyway.

The thing I love about them most is hard to explain. But I feel like everyone is standing a little farther apart than they ought to be. Like they’re just on the verge of not being able to rightly hear where the other musicians are in the song. Like, if you need to stand less than, say, six feet apart in order to keep up with each other, they’re all standing just over six feet apart. There’s a way that everything in every song sounds a tiny bit behind. And yet, if everything is a tiny bit behind, then it’s not really behind, you know? But I just feel like time moves differently in a Doors song, like a Doors minute has 60.5 seconds in it instead of 60.

That “The Spy” is a four minute Doors song that we experience as being four minutes and fourteen seconds.

You know what I mean? The Doors are kind of trippy. They’ve got their own time and space. When you make the journey over, it’s a pleasant mind-fuck to try to reconcile the differences.

What the Heck am I Doing?

My biggest fear as a writer is that I suck but can’t see it, that I’m working and submitting and working and submitting and doing my best but nothing is ever going to happen because I lack the ability to discern that my writing sucks. The worst part of this scenario is that I can’t even ever hope to improve, because I can’t see what’s wrong.

At some level, I know this is… not exactly an irrational fear… but a useless one. I can’t not write and I can’t quiet the desire for seeing my name on a book someone else published. So, what am I going to do? All I can do is acknowledge the fear and move on.

Still, it sits in my gut lately especially. I’m in a preliminary discussion about a project that would be pretty incredible and cool and right up my alley. And I’m freaked the fuck out because no one seems to doubt that I’ll be able to pull it off.

No one except me, I guess.

But I have only ever been published twice! What credibility do I even have to say “Here’s my idea and here’s why I think it will work with your concept and…”?

None, people. I have no credibility. I am taking the spot of someone who has credibility. And yet, I am not going to move out of the way for that more credible person, whoever he or she might be.

In other news, I only have two seams left on the afghan. And that intimidated the shit out of me, too. I’m going to need to keep that afghan where I can see it at all times, to remind myself that I can do things that seem nearly impossible to me.

And also, to smother the more credible person with, when he or she shows up at my house to complain I’ve taken his or her spot.