My novel, my baby, is with beta readers. I’ve had a trickle of comments so far, but I’ve still got a few weeks to wait before I receive their full feedback. The first few days killed me. I opened up Google Docs more times than I should have only to see no one had started. Instant gratification this was not.

And then, as comments started coming in, the negative comments killed me. I wanted to get defensive, wanted to argue with them, wanted to protect my baby novel that I’d worked so hard on. How could these words I’d slaved over be anything but perfect? I wanted to tell them they were wrong.

Only, they weren’t wrong. I was.

I had to remind myself this is what the beta process is all about. That each of their opinions is valid and valuable. That their feedback is only going to make my book stronger. I was thinking of any suggestions as “negative.” But how could they be anything but positive? These “negative” suggestions are going to make my story even better than it was before. I could see the effort and thought these wonderful betas had put into my story, that they wouldn’t be providing this feedback if they weren’t invested.

And as soon as I made myself believe that (which took some effort), I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Taking this next step in my writing was terrifying, and I think that fear of letting other people see my work seeped into my initial response to feedback. But I don’t want to let fear define my writing journey. I want to be better than my anxiety.

Being an anxious perfectionist makes writing a particularly bittersweet passion. In the past, I’ve seen any negative results or feedback as confirmation to not continue. If I wasn’t the best, why bother?

But perfect is an ever-moving goalpost that I’m never going to reach. I can keep moving, even if I’m not perfect, even if I sometimes get negative results. I can keep moving towards seeing my words in print. Because even if they aren’t perfect, they will be mine.