Hello Anxiety! I think I love you!

I have to deal with the fact that when it comes to my favourite bit of work - writing - I am not a calm person. I probably should be, but I am not. 

Three months ago, my world changed; I went from being a writer of articles published by newspapers and magazines in various countries and a writer of novels - rejected by agents and publishers in most countries - to a novelist with a publishing contract. 

My life prior to three months ago was full of anxiety of the 'will-I-ever-in-my-lifetime-find-an-agent-who'll-in-turn-find-me-a-publisher' kind. 

You'd think winning a massive competition (in my category) like the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award would be enough to soothe the old anxiety, but no - now I've found another reason to be anxious, and it's this: I am just one writer in a world full of talented writers, millions and millions of them. How will I ever persuade people to read my novel The Hidden? It seems like a task of such enormous proportions, I just feel completely overwhelmed. I've never felt overwhelmed by novel writing, the plotting and planning and writing so this new 'state of overwhelm' is a kind of Alice in Wonderland scenario for me. 

How do you deal with this feeling of anxiety, a feeling that says 'you have the longest, hardest road ahead of you.....you are going to have to help persuade many, many, many, many people to read your novel and you're going to have to accept all the things they say about your story - good and bad. Not only that, while all this is happening you're going to carry on writing your next thriller 'A Strange Girl' and the plot must be brilliant, clever, perfectly formed and all this must happen in the next six months.'

Tonight I have been thinking about this, and thinking deeply about it too. I have been thinking that I am probably a little bit addicted to anxiety, or rather that quite a long time ago - when I was a young girl, anxiety became the default definer of my life. And that without it, I am a little bit lost.

Was it John Lydon of the Sex Pistols, who said 'anger is an energy'? I think it was, though correct me if I am wrong. (Sorry I am not going to Google it!)

So maybe that's it! Maybe I shouldn't get anxious about anxiety, I should say 'hello anxiety, I think I love you'. 

I still adore my story, The Hidden. When I read it, I feel this lump in my throat because I remember so vividly the emotion and anger I was feeling when I wrote it. 

I wrote it for all women who are caged by a life they do not want, as a kind of therapy for myself, because at the time I was writing it I was going through a particularly devastating, horrible period in my life. I was trapped geographically, physically and emotionally as well as financially by an awful set of circumstances. My life at that time was filled with anxiety, but my anger was my energy and writing The Hidden was my release.

Hezba was the essence of all I was feeling; Aimee possessed the coolness and dignity I wanted to have at that time, but didn't have. The Hidden is an angry story but there is resolution, and in that resolution calm is restored......for the time being.