First story, and I'm feeling nervous

[kiwiwolf]

I've just submitted my first story to lit and the butterflies are swarming through my belly. I keep on thinking about the story and rewriting it over and over in my head.

It was just a quick off the cuff story written for a friend for christmas, but I thought it would be a good way to get my feet wet so to speak. Do any of you seasoned authors ever get butterflies after submitting a story?

 

[DarlingNikki]

I'm not seasoned, but I freaked after I hit the submit button, was nervous for the next two days, and went all red when I saw my title on the new stories page. I have no idea whether that reaction will pass with time. I hope so.

 

[T.H. Oughts]

Even after having 4 books published I still get nervous uploading short stories to lit.

It comes with the territory..... putting yourself out there....

 

[deliciously_naughty]

16 submissions currently and I still get nervous when I see the first feedback in my mailbox or when I check scores

 

[KillerMuffin]

Yep. I get butterflies. I get the whole "what if they don't like it!" and "so-and-so is better than I am!" routine. The only time I don't is when I've written stories for other reasons, like Lanciepants.

You're a magnificent writer, kiwi, so feel your butterflies, be nervous, but keep your eyes locked on the prize.

 

[TheEarl]

The 'Oh God, what if they don't like it' reflex is common among authors I think. Best thing is the feeling of relief when it comes back with a high ranking and nice feedback.

The Earl

 

[peachykeen]

Well I think it's safe to assume that in all likelihood, none of us submit stories here thinking, "Well, who cares if no one reads it or if people think it sucks." If that was the case, we wouldn't bother to submit them, we'd just keep them to ourselves. Instead, we put them out there for everyone and anyone who cares to have a look, and hope that they are well recieved. So if you weren't just a teensy bit nervous, I'd be very surprised!

 

[SlaveMasterUK]

I've not published anything yet but my project is well underway. I've only shown it to a select few people (less than the fingers on one hand) and was burning from inside when I did.

I felt similar when I first played my music to friends and felt terrible when they switched it off. Now those same friends keep at one of my CDs in their changers most of the time, and my music is always on in my car every time someone is lucky enough to get a lift. Each time I play a new track I feel great from the inside, perhaps because some good feedback has made me realise that what I do IS good to some people and it's good to me, and I'm not ashamed of it.

Then again, I do confess to being one of the world's biggest show-offs.

ax

 

[TheEarl]

Hey nothing wrong with that. Every author likes to feed the super-ego (the little Robbie Williams inside all of us). If we didn't, then we wouldn't give our e-mail addresses for feedback.

The Earl

 

[SlaveMasterUK]

Every author likes to feed the super-ego (the little Robbie Williams inside all of us)

Never a truer word spoken. Particularly the robbie williams bit...

ax

 

[kiwiwolf]

Yep. I get butterflies. I get the whole "what if they don't like it!" and "so-and-so is better than I am!" routine. The only time I don't is when I've written stories for other reasons, like Lanciepants.

You're a magnificent writer, kiwi, so feel your butterflies, be nervous, but keep your eyes locked on the prize.

My God Muffin... thank you. Coming from an author of your calibre that is huge praise. Now all I have to do is live up to your kudos. The butterfly swarm just doubled. LOL


To everyone who has posted to this thread, many thanks. I'm not too worried about what sort of feedback I get from the story itself. In fact the feedback I got from this thread was a lot more important to me. Any feedback I get from the story has got to be beneficial as long as it is constructive.

Any way you cut it, I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets a butterfly infestation when posting. Best of luck to all of you and your future writing endeavours, and I'm happy to finally be joining the ranks of the published.

 

[SlickTony]

Best wishes, Kiwiwolf. I know how you feel.

 

[kiwiwolf]

Well it is finally there and gathering votes. The nervousness I felt before has been replaced by something akin to the feeling I had when I first held my new born daughter. "My god! I made this???"

I got a hell of a shock when I saw it sitting there in the New Stories catagory with one of those little "H" symbols, PLUS one of those little "E" symbols. Thanks to everyone who gave me encouragement... especially KillerMuffin, La Principessa, and Debbiexxx. Ladies I owe you a lot.

 

[Dirt Man]

A new story of mine just went up, it has two votes, and both are 1's as that is the average. So no matter what anybody else honestly votes for the story, it will never make it to the top ten in the voting catagory. Now normally I would have waited until morning to see if any of my stories had been published here, but this time I was online anyway at 3am in the morning so I checked. And what do ya know Bed-n-Brunch Ho was posted, and it had 1 view, and 2 votes, averaging 1.00 for the vote count, how nice. Now I could do the same thing to every new story published here too, but I won't. You see, even with these childish attacks, my stories always average out above 4.30 by those who really read them. So I'm terribly sorry if I'm not a part of the clique in here, but I'll let my stories talk for me about how well I can write.

As Always
I Am the
Dirt Man