For the last month, I've been slogging through first round revisions for my self-dubbed "light and fun" YA contemporary, and it's been hell. The revision process has been so bad I recently had a weekend-long panic attack. While I'm known to tweet/FB things like "Revisions. Grrr...," I'm not opposed to the process. It's an accepted fact of the writer life. So the fact I struggled for breath just thinking about my WIP caused even more anxiety. I didn't think too much into the why of it all but over the last few days I've come to the conclusion that most of my recent tweaking is due to unrealistic expectations I set for myself. Despite what I said publicly , internally I kept my goal of revising this project in 31 days while working the day job and querying and handling life. The truth is, I couldn't. No matter how much I wanted it, I'm a 2-4 month revision girl. Because I set down something I couldn't realistically achieve, ...

For those not in the know, anxiety is a blanket term that covers everything from phobias to generalized anxiety, so a lot of people suffer from it. Not nearly enough get treated for it*. Anyone who suffers from general anxiety knows that functioning on certain days is difficult enough, but if you get a panic attack? You might as well pack it in for the day and take a nap. It's known that stress triggers anxiety, and what is more stressful than querying**? You're waiting to hear if your manuscript is good enough for Agent A, Agent B, and Agent C. You're creative life is on the line. All your friends have gotten requests and deals and everything and-- You get the picture. Just writing that scenario made my heart spasm. Everything you do is under the srutiny of you. Is it good enough? Are you good enough? No one is going to take you on. Everyone is going to hate it. Your crit group was just being nice. If you get an email back, the heart spams start anew: is this good...