#chicagonow

By Chris O'Brien at the Chicago Now blog site.

I talk about spending eight to nine years writing my novel Toilet Bowl, but that's not really accurate. It wasn't like I was waking up every day for almost a decade putting in a consistent three hours of work.

There were spurts, then gaps, then spurts again. Two years ago I developed more of a strict everyday regimen, but truth be told I could have had this thing done and out on the market by November of last year.

The final barrier had nothing to do with writing. It was all about fear. A long list of reasons why I shouldn't hit publish.

I want to spend this post listing them out. There are probably more. But here are my fifty shades of fear and then how I got passed them to finally hit publish.

What if only like 10 people buy the book?

And how pathetic would that be, to spend that much time on it for that small result?

What if that hurts so much I become depressed, never want to write again?

What if I missed a pretty big grammar mistake or formatting mistake?

For a big chunk of the book, my main characters are high school guys, what if some of Mark's dialogue is considered to be sexist/misogynistic?

Or what if it's too clean. If I overcorrected. What if people are like, "Teenagers don't talk like that."

I used 'frick' instead of the f-bomb. I'm almost 30-years-old and I still refer to it as the f-bomb

What if co-workers find out about the book and make fun of me?

What if people from my hometown make fun of me?

What if friends make fun of me?

What if I made a big mistake by making the setting my hometown?

Will some people interpret characters as being people they know? How can I prevent that?

The book is written first-person, will people assume Tim is me? How can I prevent that?

What if two years from now I would have seen all the flaws in the book and could have written it better?

What if all first novels just suck? Isn't that what they say? The first one is always bad, it's best to keep it under your bed? Locked away. Never released.

And what about going self-publishing, will people look down on that? It's not a real book?

What if I will never be able to get a literary agent or traditional publisher in the future because I chose to self-publish this one?

What if I get sued for using brand names? How does all of that work? Can you say he drove a Chevy or do you have to be like, "A blue sedan."

What if I set the price too high?

What if I set it too low?

Inside Out also made characters out of internal emotions, will Tim's trolls be viewed as copying that?

There's already a book out there called "The Worry Trolls." I can't call them worry trolls anymore (this one I actually did change to "The Bartleby Trolls).

What if Tim's too much of a whiner? Readers get 10 pages in and are like, "Come on dude, man up!"

What about that first bad review. That first 1-star. That first "you suck" Tweet

What gives me the right to write a book? Talk about an ego trip. No agent picked me. No publisher picked me. What am I doing?

And pause for air.