Natural Instincts

Your gut knows stuff. It knows that chocolate is awesome, and that tempeh is highly suspect. It knows that roller coasters were not intended for humans, since it climbs into your throat, both on ascent and descent.

Your gut* lies to you too sometimes though. It does to me. I’m thinking of ‘gut’ in the visceral sense, while instinct is something more cerebral-ish (for the purposes of this post anyway!)

Sometimes I’m writing and my gut sinks. And it tells my brain…no. This is stupid. And my brain is like…but can I try this? And I feel sick, and unsure, and completely insecure.

My name is Maisey Yates, and I have a problem trusting my instincts. My instincts, quite frankly, tend to scare me. They lead me to throw a Vegas wedding, references to an Elvis impersonator and a heroine using a leopard skirt and black tank top as a wedding dress, into a Presents.

They lead me to put my hero and heroine on elephant back and send them out into the Thai jungle to spend quality time at a waterfall.

BUT NO. (I shout)

*stamps*

NO NO NO!!! That’s weird. It won’t work. (I know it won’t, because my stomach has slithered down my leg and landed somewhere in my toes.)

*closes eyes and sort of halfway writes it anyway*

*presses send*

*waits for email telling me I have officially gone off the deep end*

In my head, it goes something like this:

Editor: Maisey…are there elephants in your manuscript?

Me: *gulps* Uh…no. No…couldn’t be elephants. Very large gray mice. Yep. That’s it.

*end scene*

In reality, my talk with my editor this morning went like this:

Editor: I loved that scene with the elephants and the waterfall. Can you do more of that?

Me: O_O

*end scene*

And that’s the same thing that happened with the Vegas wedding (which appears in GIRL ON A DIAMOND PEDESTAL)

It also happened with an element in HAJAR’S HIDDEN LEGACY, and…well, several other books several other times.

The problem is, I tend to doubt myself. I don’t believe my inspiration is really all that inspired and then, quite a few times now, those scary scenes have been the standout elements to my editor.

Those scenes that gave me that sinking feeling, that ‘this will never work’ feeling, have been some of my most successful.

Because somewhere, beneath the crap implanted in us by the EBIL DOUBT CROW, we do know how to write a book. The problem with *my* gut is that insecurity tends to run the show. When I go strictly off of emotion, I can really tie myself in knots.

But if I relax, if I give my inspiration a chance to get onto the page, if I try something that seems crazy, sometimes that’s when I end up with my best work.

That doesn’t mean everything’s perfect, or that everything I, or you do, will be perfect. (Far from it! I have Coffee Magnate revisions!)

But it’s worth taking chances, it’s worth pressing through the fear, to write things and SEE if they work. You might be surprised.

I sure have been!

*stalks off to revisions cave*

*for lack of a better way to describe this, I’m assigning the term ‘gut’ to…my feelings basically. Emotion and the physical blech I get when I doubt myself.