When Emeril bakes a souffle for TV, he always cheats. When it comes time to put the souffle in the oven, he switches it for one that's already finished.

(Because sitting around watching a souffle bake makes for really lousy television.)

He says he's all set to bake the souffle, he opens up the oven, and bam!

     Finished souffle.

Clever. Slick. And ruthlessly efficient.

In the real world, unaided by the sort of high-priced, power broker producers that only the Food Network can secure, things rarely work out this smoothly.

     Case in point:

For the last few weeks (barring intermissions) I've been detailing my work on an untitled superhero one-shot. The idea is to develop a concept, secure a great creative team, produce a pitch, and place it with a high profile publisher.

You probably wouldn't know it, but I've had success with this kind of approach before. In fact, if the timing had worked out differently, I might have been able to pull off the Emeril souffle-shuffle.

     "This is how you develop a script!"

     "But, wait, look over here!"

But, as we've said, things rarely work out this smoothly.

I hope that, fairly soon, I'll have something exciting to announce. Alternatively, fairly soon, I may have something very disappointing to announce.

And it's this waiting period that makes me nuts. The "everything is up in the air" period. The "everybody in the audience is waiting impatiently" period. The "crap, there's no baked souffle in the oven" period.

I call this column "an idiot's guide to becoming the world's greatest comic book writer." And when I do, I'm only mostly kidding.

You have to be ambitious to succeed as a comic book writer. Or as any kind of writer. Or as a sports star or an actor or an internationally-known rodeo clown.

     (Though to be fair, nepotism can get you pretty far as a rodeo clown.)

You certainly can't dream of becoming the world's most mediocre whatever and seriously hope to get anywhere. A certain amount of ego isn't just helpful in this line of work. It's essential. When you ask yourself the question, "Are you good enough?" the answer cannot be a shrug or an arm waive.

     I'm a much better writer than you are, and I'm getting better all the time.

I can say that with a straight face. Um. Type that with a straight face. Okay, I guess typing with a straight face isn't much of an accomplishment, but--well--if you were here with me, in my office, you would see that I... Um, well, in that case, I'd probably be pretty freaked out, but...

The point: To accomplish great things, you need to operate from a position of confidence, but even the best of us* isn't confident 100% of the time.

I struggle with doubt and anxiety all the time:

     "Am I good enough?"

     "Does this make any sense?"

     "Am I sure I put on a pair of pants this morning?"

I sometimes suffer from a paranoid conviction that people are secretly judging me. And then come the times when I have to put my work out there. To submit. To publish. And suddenly these people are OVERTLY judging me.

People have been watching me. Judging me. Maybe some people are rooting for me. Others are probably rooting for me to fail.

What do I do if I open up the oven and there's no souffle waiting for me?

Well, it's not very Emerilesque, but I guess there's always the one I just prepared. Sure it still needs to be cooked, but...

Next week, if things keep going the way they're going, be on the lookout for more cooking metaphors. ("The secret ingredient is angst.")

Oh, and if my editor gets his way, you might find something about writing comics, too.

This is one of Drew's classic Think Like Tomorrow columns.