I don’t know a single writer who has never been plagued with that dreadful, consuming insecurity at least once. Okay, twice. Fine, all the time! If you tell the whole world writing is your passion, what you feel you were born to do, then it would follow a certain amount of anxiety regarding the worth of your words is part of the deal. However, here’s what I find interesting, as well as fuel for this neurotic writer’s obsessive breakdowns. Concerning my first trilogy, the book I was worried was the weakest of the three I am overwhelmingly told was the best by professional reviewers and readers. Huh… Go figure!

The hero I thought was the best out of the three? Nope. I get messages all the time to counter my opinion. The favorite heroine of most readers who have shared with me? No, again. Not the one I would choose if pressed to do so. I love all my characters, and if I wasn’t happy with the story for the most part, I wouldn’t waste my editor’s time. But, there are always those nagging doubts, those things about even a story you love that make a writer stare up at the ceiling in the dead of night wondering…and wondering… Until said writer finally gets up, and starts tweaking a plot or character dialogue. Again!

Given all of that, I am beginning to think a writer realizing they do not always know might not be such a bad thing. Like many things, reading is subjective. I have friends who love one genre of romance and others who hate them. I have fans who tell me they aren’t so into vampires, but OMG, I LOVE Lizzie in Willow Row! Other fans write, when are you going to write another vampire novel? Maybe the best thing for writers to remember is we don’t ever know for sure which characters or plots might work for some readers, and not for others. Maybe the insecurity and rewrites and edits and edits and edits make us work harder to yield a better book, but what touches a reader could be something we almost nixed from the story.

So, no, I don’t think this writer always knows. But, I do know the surprise is sometimes the best part.