I wrote a novel, now what?

A couple years ago I finished the first draft of my first novel. The inspiration came from a short story I wrote in High School. About four years later I "rediscovered" this story when I found it on an old floppy disk (yes that was still the primary way to save portable media at the time). I was showing the story to some of my co-workers at the Johnson County Community College Writing Center, and they commented that they liked it and felt it could be expanded to a longer format. About a year after that I started writing what would become my novel. I wrote the first couple of chapters in a few weeks and then set it down for a long time. Back then I was lucky if I could type 20 words a minute and I was writing with pen and paper. I got frustrated with how long that process took and set the project down for a year. Around September of 2001 I got fired from a job (had nothing to do with the attacks so yes I was fired and not laid off). After looking for a job for about 40 hours a week for 2 months I gave up and decided it was time to transfer my handwritten chapters on to the computer. I was able to write a few more chapters directly on the computer, saving me some time, but I got stuck on a point in the story. That particular point in the story was drawing on some demons in my past and I was having a hard time facing them. In the summer of 2004 I was unemployed once again, and I started reading a lot of books that I had been meaning to get to but never did. One of those books was books 3-6 of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King (the 7th book came out later that year). My story really has no Science Fiction or Fantasy elements, but I was inspired by the story-telling. I decided that it was time for me to finish my novel.

I spent about 6 weeks writing 8 hours a day. My goal was to finish it by my 25th birthday, and I only missed that deadline by a few days. Since then, the novel has gone through a few revisions, and I about 2/3 of the way through my final revision that I would be willing to send to a publisher. The problem is that it's been in that status for over a year. Why am I so afraid of finishing it? Why am I not only having such a hard time finishing that novel, and trying to start shopping it around, but also starting on the rest of the novels I have drawn up in my head?

Honestly I think there are a lot of reasons. The first being that to some degree I don't think my story is really all that good. Sure my friends and family all loved it and they continue to ask when I am going to start trying to get it published. Obviously you are always your most critical critic, but I think it goes deeper than that. I think it has more to do with the obvious rejection letters I am sure to receive as well as not quite being ready to share this with the rest of the world. The part of me that isn't so critical knows that this story is publishable. If for no other reason than it is better than some of the things I see prominently displayed in Borders as you walk in. I read the dust jackets of some of these books and wondered why a lot of them would be worth my time and why a publisher thought so in the first place.

So where do I go from here? I think I have procrastinated enough. I think it is time to spend the 8-20 hours it will take to finalize my edits and reformat my work in the proper manuscript format. But as I write this I find myself asking how long after that will it take before I actually start sending it out. I don't know the answer to that but I hope it happens soon.