In the middle of Week 3 of Clarion

I've finished my barbecue story, and I like it. I'm slowly re-learning to like my own stuff, after a couple of very hard weeks in the Crit Pit. The problem is, of course, that I submit stories and I like them heaps, and then seventeen other people AND the Inner Writing Demons all join together in a hideous chorus of derision and pity and tell me all the things that are wrong with them and why couldn't I see all these problems myself, clearly I have terrible, terrible judgment and I'm completely clueless about my own writing and will never be able to trust myself to polish it. (Okay, the derision and pity may be projection, not reality. But you can't tell me it doesn't feel like that.)

One of the things that's helping me get a bit of perspective is that I've also agreed to edit a large (150 pages or so) document for the World Bank, because they PAY ME MONEY. The resulting rapid and painful increase in pressure has, predictably, focused my work habits and attitudes enormously.

Last night I sent "The Futurist" (slightly edited) off to a (paying) online SF magazine. I'm pretty sure it's the very first time I've sent any fiction off to a paying market ever in my life. I got somewhat spoiled writing nonfiction: I've sold many pieces, had many others (written in the course of a day job) printed verbatim in newspapers and over wire services, gotten an article printed in a peer-reviewed journal, had dozens of requests to reprint or link to stuff I've written and posted to my web site, etc. etc.

This fiction thing is different. It makes me really nervous, in a way nonfiction never has.