There has to be trust

When you like someone, your heart beats faster. That is happening to me right now, not because there is someone I like but because I have been asked, for the very first time in a long time, to expose one of the most vulnerable parts of myself. Someone has asked for the complete draft of a novel, and my heart is pumping as fast as if I had been running the last hundred meters of a marathon uphill. There is no commitment, naturally, but there is possibility. And possibility is simultaneously hopeful and terrifying. Like Burke’s sublime, it has trapped me in its immensity. 

As I sit here, the intimacies of my mind are being perused, examined in minute detail to determine whether they can engage the reader enough to commit to them. Will they love my words? Will they love my story? Will it be enough?

I tell myself this doesn’t mean anything because I need to stop myself from hoping. But I know how much it means. There is someone giving time to my words, to my worlds. Time is a limited and invaluable resource. Someone I have never met has decided to spend time with my work. How is that for amazing! 

And my heart beats furiously, and I can only hope.