Allyson, at least you're in good company. Flannery O'Connor, a Southern Gothic goddess, wrote a letter to a friend after selecting her dust jacket picture for the first edition of Wise Blood, saying:

I just got my proofs from Harcourt, Brace. The one I chose looks as if I had just bit my grandmother and that this was my only pleasure in life. All the rest were worse.

If you can manage to look at any picture of yourself and feel that it at least looks better than that, you're comparatively brimming with writerly self-esteem.

Also, dearly as I love O'Connor, I've got to admit that you have way better hair.

It's difficult for the photographer, too, though. It's not that ita doesn't take gorgeous photos, it's that I'm completely unable to appreciate anything about a photo of me, and I figure, when the tears roll down my cheeks in complete self-hate, she'll feel bad.

Polgara is somewhat used to this reaction.

Of all the things about this process that make me nervous, the picture is the worst.

Allyson, on that one, I can't reassure you. I used to take gorgeous pictures and then I hit fifty and my daughter started bogarting the family icebreaker jawline, the little bitch, and gravity decided it worked, and now I take shit pictures.

(passing cookies and kleenex)

I know this will really have no effect on your self-esteem, but for whatever it's worth, Allyson, I've seen pictures of you, and I always think, "She's so cute!" FWIW.

Oh, no, it's totally not about that at all. I'm so aware that small children don't point and scream and run away when i walk by.

It's a total skewed self-image thing that i don't understand myself.

I'm with ya, Allyson. I've only got one picture I really like of me and it was taken when I was drunk. For once, my mouth wasn't flapping.

My mouth is always open in pix. And not in that sexy, pouty way, either.

I'm always horrified by pix, but I just think that to get the true full-on Erin, you gotta get the living, breathing, snarking full-body-slam, smoooth-assed deal.

Plus. double chin in my pix. ALWAYS.

My mouth is always open in pix. And not in that sexy, pouty way, either.

I'm always horrified by pix, but I just think that to get the true full-on Erin, you gotta get the living, breathing, snarking full-body-slam, smoooth-assed deal.

Plus. double chin in my pix. ALWAYS.

I can't stop giggling. One of my nicknames is Pixie/Pix, and I kept thinking Erin was talking about me.

"Hey, I don't have a double chin! Slandering hussy!"

Why don't I take more good photos? Usually bright light squint, I'd have to say.

Photos of me, I always look stoned. Or my face is at just the right angle for my nose to look HUGE.