I wrote this story back in February when I was trying to do something (anything!) to break my writer’s block on Grace and find my writing motivation again. I liked it enough to post it in the Scribbles section of my website and I think maybe a couple people read it. A few days ago, I sent it to a reader who’d written me a lovely email. She wrote back another lovely email.

As is probably obvious, my perfectionism has been seriously getting in the way of my writing these days. When I first published Ghosts, I was totally relaxed about it. I knew no one would read it, except for my fellow fanfiction writers and readers and maybe a few friends and family. How would anyone find it, after all? In an ocean of books — literally millions of them — Ghosts would be an invisible pebble, dropped into the sea.

That is not exactly what happened.

Which is good news, of course. Great news! Every writer’s dream.

But I’m an editor at heart.

Over the past three years, my perfectionism and my creativity have been at war, with my perfectionism always managing to kick my creativity in the teeth and stomp on her face on the way to triumphant (unproductive) victory.

Until today.

36 Questions is not a perfect story. In particular, there’s one sentence (it includes the phrase “reading was good”) that makes the editor in me go pale and feel faint with dismay.

I don’t care.

My friend Tim said, “This is perfectly and wholly charming and human. I love it!”

My friend Lynda said, “Holy crap…that was a fun little story!! I mean, seriously fun. My cheeks hurt from smiling while reading it. You can quote me on that. ;)”

The reader who wrote me a lovely letter said, “I just finished Thirty-Six Questions with a smile on my face. What a feel good story! I’d love to know how they answer the rest of their questions!”

Another reader who’d had trouble with my mailing list story this week (and who I sent this one to) said, “Enjoyed this short story as well! Truly inspirational romance – I love it!”

It hasn’t been professionally edited (by anyone but me); I designed the cover myself; and I did the production, too, of course. So yeah, I’m breaking all the rules of modern self-publishing. But I think it’s a nice little story. It may or may not be worth .99, depending on the value of ninety-nine cents to you, but I put it in KDP so I’ll have a chance to make it free for a few days later this month.

And meanwhile my creative self is sticking out her tongue, thumbs in her ears, saying “nyah, nyah,” to my editor self. Let’s hope she can keep up the attitude long enough to finish writing Grace and get it published, too.

PS That image up top is a link to Amazon, but here’s another one: 36 Questions