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I considered quitting...

Writer's picture: Jessica Cage Jessica Cage
I wish I could say it was a one-off thought, but honestly, it has been happening a lot more often than I care to admit. I have this incessant voice in the back of my mind telling me that I'm not good enough and I'm wasting my time. Does anyone else have that? No? Just me? Cool.

Now before I continue, please know that the odds of me walking away from writing are as slim as the space between my eyelashes.

And I know that this is like saying the quiet part out loud, but it's one of those things I feel I need to do.

One of the biggest struggles for me and my work has been EDITING. And I have admitted this in an email to my Newsletter peeps just before I delisted most of my back catalog. I want to say this isn't the fault of the editors I used. I myself had a blind spot to editing for a while due to some emotional/mental things I had to work through. It was like I couldn't be critical of the work or I would stop doing it. Super bad for a creative and if you feel that way I highly suggest therapy. It seriously helped me.

Unfortunately, after I lifted the barrier between my emotional self and my creative projects, I saw the errors and I was mortified. I'd sold THOUSANDS of copies. And given away THOUSANDS MORE! How? How could I have readers who love my work when they were so clearly flawed? People who kept coming back, and countless who'd likely never pick up another book by me.

All I kept thinking to myself (and saying to my bestie who I owe a lifetime of wine for listening to me during these times) was that I was leaving behind a legacy of poorly edited mediocracy. What a crappy thing to think about yourself.
(I am still working on that internal voice being nicer to me.)

So I chopped a bunch of my books from the lineup and started revamping them.

Then something great happened. I got offered a contract with WEBTOON. To write a story. They actually PAID me to write a book.

Totally affirming, yes?

Sure... until one reader decided to spam my Instagram comment section and respond to every story I posted about how my work sucked and was full of errors. Yep, total Troll behavior but it hit a spot so close to home I had to readjust my brain before I could process thoughts.

Dramatic, yes, but my mom didn't get me a "Best Actress" statue when I was a kid and dub me the world's greatest drama Queen for nothing!

Hello, spiral, my old friend... or however that song goes.

Do you know what's interesting? I kept going. I blocked the troll and I wrote that book for WEBTOON and was so excited because, with a TEAM of editors, this was going to be my cleanest and best work yet.
..... AND SOMEONE FOUND A TYPO!

Four editors/proofreaders (at least).
Three (or more) rounds of editing.

And there is a typo.

I chuckled because... well...I considered quitting.

All I can do now is make a promise to myself and my readers, that as always I will strive to bring the strongest content I can. And I'll work on being nicer to myself in the meantime.

Currently Writing: A Corruption of Gilded Ashes
Current Wordcount Total for February: 26, 191

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