This is the existential question that authors (and, really, all creators of all kinds) face: “What if it’s bad?” Everything we do, we want to turn out well, but what if it’s not? That’s what we’re talking about today.
In regular life, things are trucking along. We’ve made a bunch of changes at the house including purging and rearranging things. We’re nowhere near done, but things feel better already.
Drawing from the Well
Not a lot of progress here, but progress is progress.
Wait… *looks at spreadsheet* I did better than I thought. 8,000 words in a week isn’t terrible. It isn’t fantastic and definitely below the pace I would like, but it’s better than last week. Hooray!
I’m closing in on the end of this arc already, but there are many holes in it that need to be filled (as we discussed last week). Still lots more to do in the Red Edit, but I’ll keep you posted here.
Page 160/284
80,478/145,004 Words
Just a note on the escalating word count. The final word count is an estimation. This is necessarily a malleable process. I’m using math to estimate where I’ll land. Even now, I can look at the 145k number and say that it’s too low because of content I know I need to add that isn’t really accounted for yet. So if you’re wondering why the final word count keeps increasing as I write more, making it look like I’m getting further away from my goal, that’s why.
Filling the Well
I’m still behind, but I finished two books last week: All These Monsters by Amy Tintera (great!) and Win from Within for business (also good). I’m finishing up All These Warriors now while continuing to chew through Terry Goodkind’s second Sword of Truth novel, Stone of Tears, the diagrammatic re-read of John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story, and nearing the end of Joy by B.R.M. Evett. That book really gets me thinking and I enjoy the adventure. Check it out here.
Well Chat
But what if I’m no good?
Ever asked that? I know I have. The doubts that come with life are bad enough, but when you put yourself out there for review via your own creation, those fears multiply. Years ago, I used to tell no one that I was writing a book. Part of that was the lingering disbelief that I would ever arrive at a finished novel. The greater part of it, though, was that I didn’t want to be judged. I was writing a fantasy novel. I didn’t want someone to look at me like some D&D nerd. What I have learned since then is that D&D is awesome and I should have never feared, but we’ll get to that.
My wonderful wife was really the one to push me to start talking about my writing. She encouraged me to start an author page on Facebook and talk about my journey there. I already had a blog but I rededicated my effort to it. I focused on the work and, with social media, that work had increased. It was all I could do to keep up.
Then publishing time came around. I was excited about the finished manuscript, my cover design, and even formatting. It all was going so well. And that’s when that diabolical question returned: “What if it’s bad?” What if I worked all these years, put all this work into something I love, convince people to buy it through my enthusiasm and descriptions…and it sucks? I would be ruined, the imposter I knew I was. I would be worse than a has-been, I’d be a never-was.
Around that time, someone asked me, “What does success mean to you?” I’ve talked about this multiple times including here in 2019 (pre-publication) and here in 2023 (post-publication). That’s when I determined that there are levels of success for me. I could have sworn I talked about this at some point recently, but in going back through my blogs, that does not seem to be the case. I decided that publishing was success; that was my baseline. If I sold ten copies, that was another level. A hundred would be another level. After that, it was all extra gravy.
Did you notice what isn’t in there? I never once fastened my metric of success to reviews saying my book was good. That has happened organically, but it didn’t dictate whether or not I saw myself as successful. And, all of a sudden, the worry of whether or not it was bad went away. I was proud of it. It was the best piece of writing I could create. That had to be enough.
How do you fight those doubts? Sound off in the comments and have a great week!
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG