Fear of the odds

I received my copy of RWR on Saturday and read through it. It was then it hit -- how many people are out there writing, and what the odds are. Mostly I ignore the odds. You have to. You can only concentrate on writing the best story possible, trying to do justice in your head to the characters.
But this time, I gave a great big gulp! But now I havet o forget that and concentrate on my wip. My fingers are corssed that it will be good enough -- that the tension will be there and the conflicts strong enough.
The fears are always coming back to haunt you. YOu may know you suffer from a sagging middle or that your backstory might be muddled. And that you need to avoid repetition because it makes the story drag....then as you are working through the edits, you discover all this and think -- wh? Why didn't I see this sooner? Or how can I make this better?
There were other interesting articles in the RWR -- ones on what chapters can do for you. Some of the suggestions, I plan to put into practice at the RNA Northumberland. We can do a lot more.
There was an intersting article on multi-cultralism which made me think because I write about a culture that is very different from my own, am I a multi-cultural writer? My characters are pagan but I attend mass every week for example. They have slighty different value systems and were brought up differently to me. But the same is true of any character I would write. There again there are certain inate values that my heroes and heroines posess -- integrity, loyalty, courage. Human emotion has not changed for thousands of years. Passion, conflict and strong feeling all existed then. I just have to find a way to communicate to today's reader.

One hundred more pages of this round to go and then it is the paper round.