Baring the Writer's Soul

Few professions require people to expose themselves the way writers do.  Sometimes, like now, knowing my newest manuscript should have arrived at the publishers for review, I think posing in a skimpy bikini might be easier than allowing someone else to judge my writing.  At least in the bathing suit I would be judged by physical standards, things I can change.  But in my writing...well that's me.  I can't write without infusing part of my soul into the work.

Maybe that's why, as a writer, I find taking criticism to be as easy as eating Brussels sprouts--not only do they taste bad, but they smell bad, too.  When someone likes my writing, that person likes me, because I am part of the writing.  And when they don't like my writing...maybe that's why family members don't make very good critics--they have to live with us after all.

And revisions?  Revising a manuscript is like taking a deep look inward, facing the parts of you that you don't like, and having the courage to cast them aside.  It hurts.

But writers do it.  I do it.

Why?

I'm not sure.  Perhaps it has something to do with holding that novel in my hands, my name across the front.  Or reading that one review that says I did something right.  Whatever that something is, it drives me to keep writing, to keep baring my soul...

And, as I move the mouse to click the "publish" button, to keep wishing I had chosen to model bikinis.