Butterfly Robots In My Stomach

On Tuesday, I'm getting my first chapter workshopped in my creative writing class.  I'm nervous! I mean, I'm not afraid of criticism.  I like criticism.  Really.  But it's still scary every time I have new people read my work.  What if it's boring?  What if it's god-awful and I just don't know it? What if they secretly think I'm god-awful and should have my fingers stuck in a blender before I inflict more torture upon the world in the form of the written word?

Writing is such a personal thing that even when you try and divorce yourself from the experience, it still twinges a little when someone rejects your work.  It's not a rejection of you, but it feels like it sometimes.  

I hesitate to say I get scared of these things, because I encourage my critiquers to be harsh.  There is no way to grow unless you hear what is wrong.  There's always stuff that's wrong, no matter how many drafts you've done.  But at the bottom of my trembling heart, I am terrified.

Yes.  See?  Serious post after much frivolous robot love.  Speaking of robot love, sometimes (this is so embarrassing) I write snippets of stories that pop up in my head or fanfiction that is way too crappy to expose to the world.  I write them for fun.  It's very easy, and when I am inspired, I can turn out 12+ pages in less than two hours.  That's because I know no one else but me will ever lay eyes on it.  Anyway (I know you're curious to see how robot love ties into this confession), I'm having this Beauty and the Beast theme binge lately.  I formally wrote Beauty and the Minotaur as a short story in April.  But I keep thinking about new scenarios to do.  Because Beauty and the Beast is such an endlessly changeable idea.  Like, what if Belle fell in love with Lumiere?  What if a person fell in love with a robot?  (Like a real robot.  Not a robot in the form of Will Smith in iRobot.  That's cheating.)  Etc.  (Robot love, giggle).  I feel lame snippet coming on.  No worries.  I will not release this horror upon the world at large.  You are unprepared for the cheesy writing exercises of Icy Roses.