Twice Shy (Holly Schindler)

 ...and I wasn't even once bitten. I mean I was twice shy as in: doubly shy. Shy x 2. 

I don't know where it even came from. I just know there was a bit of a crushing fear about interacting with...you know...people.

It was always with me. Even when I was little. Apparently, my parents used to try to take me to a playground when I was small and I would cry because there were other kids there. 

I don't know what shyness is, exactly. Insecurity about, well, everything? 

I do know that the shyness persisted all the way through college, into adulthood. 

And I would say the one thing that finally got me over it? 

Releasing a book. 

The lead-up to releasing my first book, A Blue So Dark, was kinda...terrifying.

I had this realization: So, when this thing comes out, anyone who wants to can pull it off the shelf, sift through the contents of my brain, and pass judgment on it???

For a few months before the book came out, I'd actually break out in hives on a nightly basis. 

And then, after the book came out...

Some people loved it. Some people didn't. My brain was sifted through. And I lived.

I'm nowhere near as shy as I used to be. I do wonder sometimes what it might have been like to move through high school in a way in which I wasn't constantly afraid of making a mistake. 

And it makes writing characters without that fear all the more delightful.

~

Holly Schindler is the author of the YA A Blue So Dark