I Worry

I worry that I’ll never finish. I worry that I’ll finish a draft and never revise it. I worry that I’ll finish the book and no agent will pick it up. I worry that an agent will pick it up and fail to sell it and then dump me. I worry that it will sell and get bad reviews. I worry that it will sell and get no reviews. I worry about the attention I’ll get when it’s reviewed. I worry what people in my hometown will think of it. I worry that I’ll fail at bringing the ideas to life the way they are in my head. I worry that people in the city where the novel is based will take issue, all kinds of issue, with it. I worry that readers will be like who cares. I worry that my main character is unlikeable. I worry that people will find her whiny and inactive. I worry that readers will think she’s me. I worry that I’m not being funny enough. I worry that what I think is funny is not funny to other people. I worry that when I read it out loud and get to a funny part, or at least a part I think is funny, nobody will laugh and then I’ll get nervous and the rest of my reading will suffer. I worry that I’m trying too hard and leaching all the energy out of my prose. I worry that I won’t nail the details of the music industry. I worry that I have not done enough research. I worry that I’m spending too much time researching. I worry that people will think it’s not true to life. I worry that it’s too true to life and thus boring. I worry that there’s not enough plot. I worry that there’s not enough lyricism. I worry that there’s not enough hours in the day in the week month year life for me to ever finish it. I worry that it will have an ugly cover. I worry that it won’t be on any preview lists or hot roundups. I worry that there are too many curse words. I worry that the voice isn’t authentic. I worry that I’m not letting the narrative voice have its own power on the page outside the character’s interiority. I worry that all the holes I’m leaving in the first draft will live to be the book’s weakest spots. I worry that it’ll get unfavorably compared to better books along the same lines. I worry that is just isn’t that interesting. I worry that my supporting characters are thin. I worry about getting to know my supporting characters fully and how long that might take. I worry about how long it is taking. I worry about not being driven to write deep into the night. I worry about not being driven to write before the break of dawn. I worry that I don’t want it badly enough. I worry that it’s all idea and no execution. I worry that I’m a phony. I worry that I can teach but not do. I worry that I’ll get bad blurbs. I worry that no one will want to blurb it. I worry that people will say nice things to me about it but those things will be lies. I worry that no one will write intellectual essays about it. I worry that there are anachronisms. I worry that I’ll get dumb hate mail disputing factual inconsistencies. I worry that people will say mean things on Amazon. I worry that people will say mean things on Goodreads. I worry that people will say overly nice things that embarrass me. I worry that my character is a bitch. I worry that my character isn’t nearly bitchy enough. I worry that I’m trying to write about something I don’t know anything about. I worry that I’m not taking enough risks. I worry that I’ll have this much trouble the next time. I worry that there will never be a next time. I worry that I spend all my time worrying and not enough time writing. I worry that I don’t have a title yet. I worry that people will be all like, you took that long to write that? I worry that I’m not nailing Chicago. I worry that I’m not nailing Nashville. I worry that my students will be embarrassed for me when it does badly. I worry that it should take some different form. I worry that people I respect won’t like it. I worry that people who like it will be people I don’t respect. I worry that there will be typos. I worry that the material is far too mundane, just not novel-worthy. I worry when I feel good and giddy about what I’ve written that I’m delusional. I worry—

Susannah Felts is a writer, editor, and educator in Nashville, as well as co-founder of The Porch Writers’ Collective, a nonprofit literary center. She is the author of This Will Go Down On Your Permanent Record, a novel, and numerous journal and magazine articles.