Adventures in beginning to write a book!

Otherwise entitled "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh"

Somehow this is a scary venture.  It isn't that I don't have the ideas, far from it.  I have ideas coming out of my ears. If anything I have too many ideas.  The problem is whether what I write will be any good?  Will it be interesting, arresting, engaging, entertaining. Or will it be the worst type of author's nightmare - a book that nobody wants to finish <shudders>

I have written before - newspaper articles, stories at school (that usually seemed to finish with the desperate line "and s/he woke up and it was all a dream") and fanfiction.  I enjoyed it and always got a positive response.  But this is so, so much bigger.  The plot is bigger, the character is bigger and somehow the stakes are so, so much higher!

All the decisions are purely mine - what to leave in, what to leave out.  Will my herione be likeable, even traditional or will she be an anti-heroine?  Will I regret cutting one of the lesser characters? And probably what is probably the biggest decision for me - will the book include any...erm....sex scenes.

Sex scenes.  What can I say? In some ways making your characters have steamy sex is like walking in on your parents having sex - sort of to be expected but frightfully embarrassing for all concerned.  I think some sex would fit in the plot - but how graphic should it be.  Shall I be whimsical and suggestive? Or shall I be blatant, even obvious in terminology.   And therein lies the crux of the main problem - how many ways there are to describe male/female genitalia and which to use.  On the one hand this isn't a sex book, per se, the sex is incidental - important but incidental to the plot.  On the other hand I don't want it to sound like a cheap attempt at literary porn.  

All these things have been racing around my head for days now.  I have brainstormed countless times.  I have postcards, pieces of paper, pads with scribblings galore on.  I have started writing, but oh the nerves! At times I wonder if I'm being ridiculous - that no-one will want to read what I'm writing, that I'm wasting a lot of time.  At other times I think I've got some bloody good ideas!

And the what ifs! Good lord, the what ifs! What if publishers hate it?! What if they want to change it? What if I finish it and don't like it? What if it is published and people think the sex scenes are real life and describing me?!

So where do I go now - I battle past the what ifs, past the unease and past the momentary (alright a lot more than momentary) lapses in self confidence.  Definitely battle past the dilemma as to whether it is a penis or a member or another yet to be discovered phrase!  And I embrace my ideas and characters.  What's the worse that can happen - only failure and after all as the cliche says "you're only a failure if you fail to try".

And I've tried - so by that token I'm already a success.  Anything else is just a bonus!