And...The Final Countdown is On
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 Before I get to today's post, I wanted to let you know that I'm also guest blogging over on The Divining Wand today, talking about goals and goal-setting and dreams and how to make them happen. Head on over and check it out.
So...WOW. Just wow. ONE MORE WEEK and The One That I Want will be ushered out into the world. It's crazy, it's surreal, it's daunting. Mostly, it feels akin to being pregnant for eight and a half months, then looking in the mirror and suddenly realizing that there's no turning back: you're having this baby and you're having it soon!
To pull back the curtain and give you a glimpse as to what goes on for an author leading up to publication, I've spent the bulk of the last few weeks doing promotional stuff: answering online q/as, writing guest blogs, finalizing the book club guide...things like that. Little things that end up eating the bulk of my day. (Don't get my wrong, I'm not complaining.) There is a flurry of back-end activity on both my part and the part of my publicity team, a last-minute push to ensure that anyone who might consider reviewing the book is aware of its publication, and then...mostly, there's silence. That's the part that gets a little easier with each book but will never, EVER get truly easy. The bottom line is that but for a few long-lead reviews (the trades like Publishers Weekly and the magazines such as Redbook), you really have no idea how the product that you poured a year of your life into will be received.
Which is something that I don't think I ever really considered when I was an unpublished author: the anxiety - EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER YOUR REVIEWS and EVEN THOUGH YOU WROTE THE BEST BOOK YOU COULD - over what comes next. You feel a little bit like Sally Field, despite wanting desperately NOT to feel like Sally Field because you like to think that you're impermeable to what people are going to say about you. But I think just about every author out there wants to be well-received, even if he or she claims that reviews don't matter, and so, in this in-between time, it's hard not to fret, not to lose a little sleep.
There is also, this time around, the weight of expectations. Again, nothing I'd ever considered before, and TRUST ME, I am not complaining. I have readers to please, I have a publisher to please, and let's be honest: you guys know me, you know that I set the bar high for myself, so I have myself to please. It's a strange position to be in - publishing the book in and of itself is an accomplishment, but now, there is more riding on it. I suppose this is true of any career: the higher you ascend, the more you have to both risk and gain. But still, expectations keep me up a bit at night too. (Clearly, I'm not sleeping at all!)
Anyway, that's what goes on in the mind of a writer on the cusp of publication. It's a tangled mix of euphoria and nerves - I'm so super-proud of this book, of the effort that it took me, and what that effort represents to me personally, but I can't lie and say that, like every book launch, I'm not nervous. But so it goes. That's life as a writer. I'll embrace it with open arms.
Reader Comments (2)
:D
Thanks for the behind-the-scenes peek. I'm so excited for you! And jumping over to the Divining Wand...
I can only imagine the place you must be in right now ... such a mixture of emotions, anticipation, and excitement. No wonder you can't sleep! It must be nearly impossible to shut your mind off to all of that. Just following along with your blog posts, it's so easy to tell what this book means to you and what a journey it's already been. You've accomplished so much with it, even before its launch, and I look forward to hearing about all the success that will come of it as of next week. I've always believed that the most powerful books are the ones that take the author on a journey right along with the characters, and I have full faith that your journey will continue to be a wonderful one. So excited for you!!