A Note of Encouragement for Writers

All writers come with baggage. 

If you suffer from procrastination, emotional and/or physical wounds, self-defeating or self-destructive behaviors, crippling moments of doubt and despair, there is something you need to remember.

Your reader knows nothing about this. They only see the finished product. 

Most of my readers don't know my professional vocation, my list of failures, my years of rejection slips, my failed manuscripts that I have buried as a service to humanity, or years of mental challenges caused by rampant depression. They only see my finished works, the stories that I have written for their enjoyment. 

And it's the same for you. Your readers see the work, not the writer.

When you write and your Internal Critic attempts to sabotage your work, with failures and shortcomings of the past and present, remind it that your readers don't know you and carry no suppositions or prejudices as they read your story whether it be a short story or a massive trilogy of encyclopedia-sized tomes.

They only see your plot, your characters, your world, and your tale as a whole.

So write your best because your present work uses your failures and successes of the past as energy and ideas and rest in comfort that your reader is only interested in your story, not who you are.