So where do this creativity insecurity leave us writers? Well, we try to laugh it off as being paranoid about others stealing our ideas - a very valid point indeed, in today's society - but not half as important that acknowledging that we're actually dead scared someone will take it to pieces. Indeed, as some of the comments have already shown, it is our heart and soul that we lay bare each time we write. Therefore it is this same part of ourselves that we expose to critics and supporters alike when we, in our insecurity, search for feedback.
Is it no wonder, then, that criticism hurts? Even when it's well-meant and constructive? To be told that something should be changed, something should be removed, or even placed elsewhere in the story ... it hurts like nothing else. Each piece of a story is like a newborn baby that cannot be taken away from it's mother - and to do so is to tear her apart. This is how our stories feel to us - we become possessive, over-protective parents.
I don't think that there will ever really be a resolution on this for us writers - and artists of other forms too. That is the nature of creativity. One works on something that one loves, that is very much a part of one - but then one has to work to clamber over the insecurities, to be strong enough to believe in what one has created, in the 'rightness' of it, no matter what critics may say.
