Paranoia and Writers

I'm not usually a paranoid person, but I am when it comes to my writing career.

Last night, while sitting in the bathroom, I started reading an article in the recent Romance Report (the official magazine of RWA) called, "When Bad Things Happen to Good Writers." It's all about the rather inevitable decline in one's career, when your sales numbers drop, the editor stops returning your calls, and you suddenly find yourself without a renewed contract.

It's the sort of thing that professional writers don't like to think about. After all, we've all worked hard to get where we are (were?!) And, more than that, the mystical "call" came -- the one from our agents where, suddenly, we became published novelists. All our worries should be over. We've "made it." But... as the article warns, these things happen. It's the nature of the business.

And I should know. It's already happened to me. I used to write as my alternate personality; now I write as me because of this little thing called "the law of diminishing returns."

I only read about two paragraphs of the article and I can already feel the storm clouds gathering. (Yes, I KNOW I'm being paranoid. But have you ever heard the phrase, "Once bitten, twice shy"? That's me all over.) Now, I've been staring at my email inbox, and started muttering, "She hasn't sent the revision letter yet," (speaking of my editor). "She hates me. It's all over. I'll never work in this town again."

I told my partner about my ominous feelings last night, and she did what any sane person would do: she laughed. "Of course your editor hasn't written yet. It's only been two months. That's well within her usual return time on these things. Be patient."

Patient? I'm sure she said, "Paranoid".....