I'm signed up to lecture some newbie puzzle-writer nerds about how to work with an editor when writing puzzles.
I know lots of folks have trouble letting someone else see their work before it's polished.
I can give advice that works for me on getting past that… but I've noticed that I'm generally less wired for shame-in-rough-work than most folks. My techniques probably don't work for everyone.
Like, the same attitude that caused me to say "Sure, I will speak in public. Why wouldn't I?" suggests that for this one aspect of working with an editor, I'm ⅔ blind to the problem. Also the same attitude that means I'm probably going to leave that extraneous "Like" at the start of this paragraph when I publish this here blog post, yep.
So… what helps? What do you tell yourself? When it comes to puzzles, I say "Here are three rough ideas. Which one should I turn into a puzzle?" It works for me, but I bet for some folks that's three times as hard as saying "Here is one rough idea."
If you don't want to post your rough, unpolished answer out here on some public web page, you can mail me at lahosken at gmail dot com or contact me however. If you don't want to even email me your unpolished answer… c'mon, I obviously don't know what you should do about that. Help me out, would you?
