Feeling Dragged Back

You ever had a moment like this? You're moseying along perfectly fine with yourself when suddenly, out of the blue, wham! you're smacked by something that knocks you off your feet and just like that, you're no longer walking, you're staring up at the sky wondering what the heck just happened.
That just happened to me.
I learned about several modern-day writers today in English and as I watched I started to feel slightly unworthy of the title of author. Those little snarky doubts that I have to work so hard to dispel started to work their way back inside of me.
You're not good enough to be like them.
No one will like your work.
Bananas write better novels than you.
You should just give up.
Ouch. Funny thing though, since it's me doing this to myself. I know I'm not perfect, I still mess up on things and even now as I'm going through and reading Twisted I'm shocked at how many mistakes there are that I conveniently missed while it was on my computer downstairs (I'm on a different one now, my computer doesn't get Internet, house rules and I'm not going to disappoint my mother by wiring my computer to get Internet, so I just go with this) maybe it's the change in lighting, or that I'm looking at a different computer screen, but I can't help but see how much needs to be fixed.
Ouch again.
I noticed that since I started writing three years ago, I've become a perfectionist and I wonder, how will I know when it's good enough? Or will I just keep rewriting until I've driven myself insane and have to be dragged away in a straitjacket?
And here's the bigger worry,
Even if I do publish, what if no one reads my book? What if I just wasted two years of my life as a hermit practically writing, rewriting and daydreaming about these books? What if people do read it and hate it!?
Ack!
See, this is why I generally don't go down that road, too many thoughts. Too deep in and I may quit out of frustration. (Only to restart in about an hour. My characters won't let me quit, and neither will my family or friends. Still I get worried, can't help it.)
And now I have to write an essay for English talking about this, here's the essay format

Prompt 2: Imagine you are a published author. You have received a lucrative contract to write a novel in the next year. You will be interviewed about your upcoming novel. In preparation for the interview, they have sent you a series of questions. To prepare for the interview, write the answers to the following questions.

What will you choose to write about? 
What obstacles might you face?
How do you develop your characters?
How will you choose the setting?
What literary techniques do you commonly use?  Foreshadowing?  Flashback?
Have you ever had writer’s block? What would you do to overcome this? 
Do you make a schedule of writing?
How will you stay on schedule?
What most excites you as you begin the process of writing?

 Brainhoney or elearning owns this and wrote it, not me. But I swear to all the readers of this blog, if I ever get asked these questions, I will quote the essay I will write word for word and you will all hear it and laugh at me. I give you permission, rude, obnoxious laughter followed closely by a big fat, "I told you so!"

Okay, so maybe I won't enjoy the whole rude laughter, but I still think it'd be funny, especially when right now, I doubt I'll even sell a single copy. I'm self-publishing, how far can a self-published author even go?

Oops, there I go again. Doubting Tayla, it should be my new nickname. :(

Persistence. It's all about persistence. A lot of persistence, I went on trek two years ago and for those of you who don't know, trek can either be considered a lot of fun, or full of a lot of brainless teenagers. Basically, we're recreating what our pioneer ancestors went through, we pull handcarts over 35 miles of terrain over the space of four (or three, I can't remember) days. Sounds nuts, I still can't figure out why, but it was one of the last times I went anywhere with my older sister and it was just us, so I enjoyed it.

Anyway, I feel like I'm pulling a handcart of doubts by myself. I had to pull one of those suckers in the front, by myself. It was so heavy I couldn't pull it very far or very fast. That's how I feel now, and the doubts aren't helping, they're dragging me back instead of pushing me on.

I know, me whining, but these doubts are very real, and I don't know what else to do with them. Sigh, I guess I'm in a 'down' of writing, but at least there's always an 'up' to look forward to. When you go down, you always go up, unless of course, you get stuck in between, then it kind of sucks.

:)