Confidence, Or My Lack Thereof

I’ve been thinking about the next steps I want to take in my writing career. 

I guess I’m in a pensive mood because I’ve been working on updating my query letter.  I spent about a week listening to podcasts and reading blogs about the best way to present your book to an agent.  I’ve moved things around.  Deleted things.  Added things.  Deleted them.  Declared myself done only to realize that I now have previously published works to mention.  But the basic form for the letter is there, and I have a few places I’m thinking of sending them to when they open.

However, there’s a voice in the back of my head asking if I should be looking at self-publishing instead. Is it ready for me to hand off to an editor?  Is it good enough, period.  

Yeah, I’m having a crisis of confidence.  Adding on to that I have nothing in the chute that will be published any time soon, I’m fighting the urge to publish to have something, anything out there.  And I know that is the worst possible choice for me at this moment.

So I’m going to sit back and work on editing and rewrites and ignoring the chattering voice in my head.  Because I know that if I did publish it now, it would change to questioning if I took the easy way out (not that self-publishing is the easy way out by any means).  So it’s a no win situation either way with the little voices in my head.  My only choice that makes sense to me is to not listen to it.