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There have been very few times in my life when I knew I was doing exactly the right thing at the right time. The day that I got married, it was right. When I was feeding my infants, I was doing right. Otherwise, as a freelancer, I second-guess almost any project.

Should I work on my career, or take the day to help the school? Should I write a new piece or edit? Should I edit or spend time investigating possible publishers? Should I invest time in a writing course on a new genre, or work harder on the ones I’m published in? Oh, and my next book is coming out, I need to prepare a publicity packet, maybe I should be doing that. Sometimes the jobs get only half done.

This anxiety is compounded by a study I recently read that said we could all learn to be proficient at anything; it just takes effort and time (on the order of 10,000 hours). The people who are naturals at sports, singing, drawing and any of the other goals I could set for myself, may have had more natural talent, but they also work harder. This means I cannot make the excuse for myself that I can’t learn Spanish because I don’t have a good ear for languages. I could learn; I just need to work.

The amazing thing to me is that freelance writers get anything done at all. Somewhere along the way I must have decided that writing is the core of what I want to be doing, because even with all the questions and doubts, it is what I do. I would love to move from project to project with less anxiety, but I do know I will fight my demons back enough to spend part of every day with words.