Obviously that people WILL read your book should come as no surprise. That’s why we write, yes? So that other people can read it. But after years and years of no one but family members and/or crit partners reading your stories, the time comes when COMPLETE STRANGERS get the chance to cast their eye over your scratchings. And even though you think you’ve prepared yourself for this moment, it’s actually bloody terrifying. Especially when you know that these strangers will also discuss your book with OTHER COMPLETE STRANGERS! People you don’t know will be having discussions about your book and the characters you’ve created and they will have opinions about them! ‘Scuse me while I go and be sick in the corner…

Finn on the iTunes store!!

Yeah, I’m neurotic, can’t you tell? Anyway what brought this on is the fact that Falling for Finn has been sent out for review and am feeling anxious about it. It’s also now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes. And soon should be up on the Samhain website too.  It’s everywhere basically.

But that lovely period between acceptance and release date is drawing to a close. Those lovely months when only you and your editor know how brilliant (or otherwise) you are. Where you can tell yourself you have a masterpiece on your hands and can fantasise about what you’re going to buy with the millions of dollars in royalties that you’re going to get. Or write down your acceptance speech for when you win the Man Booker prize or get your Nobel medal. Yep, those days will be over soon and then everyone’s going to see behind the curtain and you’ll either be outed as a fraud or, worse, people will just shrug their shoulders and wonder what the fuss is about.

Of course there is the option that you’ll be hailed as the next Nora but let’s not mention that. 

Right, so,  despite the fact that I’m terrified of ya’ll reading it, it would be remiss of me NOT to point out that iTunes has a first chapter sample of Finn that you can download. I’m not sure how to link to this (and it’s not on the NZ iTunes bookshop – Grrrr!) but if you’re in the US (not sure about UK) and you’re keen to read the first chapter, then feel free….

It never goes away – I used to think that once I sold my first book, I’d never feel afraid of sending my writing out again. Wrong. Somehow the thought that the editor loved the last book makes sending in the next book harder. Because what if you’ve somehow stuffed up the next book?  It was diffcult to write – does that mean it’s worse? What if the editor hates the story? What if she hates everything else I send in to her ever???

Sending stuff out to other publishers after you’ve been accepted by one is STILL scary – I’m waiting on a couple of other things and even though I’ve sold a couple of stories, I’m still as anxious and neurotic as I was before I sold those other ones. In fact, in many ways, fear of rejection was easier when I was unpublished because I kind of had nothing to lose. Now, I’ve sold a couple of times which means that theoretically it should be easier to sell again. Right? Right??? And if I don’t sell, does this mean I suck? That the other publishers were wrong to accept me??

People will read my books – some people will love them. Some people will hate them. Some people will be disappointed because the books weren’t as good as they assumed they would be. Some people will be pleasantly surprised because they were better than expected.  Some people will love the first one and yet hate the second. And vice versa. Some people will form opinions about me as a writer and some people will not hesitate to let me know what those opinions are. Which is scary.

Or what if no one reads my books? What if I don’t sell and disappear into oblivion? There are thousands and thousands of writers out there – what makes my book any more special?
 

Skiing downhill really fast….

This whole year has been like skiing downhill very fast and knowing there’s a turn coming up – you’ll either fly off the edge of the mountain and crash spectacularly with lots of broken bones. Or you’ll do a magnificent parallel turn in a shower of snow. One thing’s for sure though, the turn is coming up and you don’t know how it’s going to go until you get there. And that’s kind of scary.

With all this fear stuff, maybe I’m just neurotic and need to chill. Maybe no one else worries about these kinds of things and I’m being over-dramatic. Whatever the case, just know that if fear is something you don’t want to have to deal with or is something that paralyses you then writing isn’t the job for you. Because it doesn’t go away once you’ve sold. It just changes. The stakes become higher. The further up the mountain you get, the further you have to fall.

After five years of this, I thought I’d become pretty good at handling all the worry and the fear. But nope. I think I’ve just got better at drinking wine.

Anyone else find the fear difficult to deal with? What do you do in the face of it?

So I thought I’d write intead about being on the other side of the publishing fence and what’s different about it.

Nothing as it turns out.

Hehe. Actually, that’s not strictly true. My inbox is a lot fuller of author loop emails than it used to be. And I guess the fears about writing have changed a little.  It’s not not so much ‘will they like my writing’ as ‘will they like this new story’. There’s a bit of that ‘difficult second album’ thing going on.

I’ve finished the first draft of my next Indulgence and am now working on the next book for Samhain. Both are proving bears to write. I somehow thought the writing would all get a lot easier once I was accepted but turns out not. I’m worried my ed won’t like my next Indulgence book as much as the first – I wrote the first one a while ago after all. And I’m really worried my Samhain ed won’t want to buy the one I’m going to send her because, well, it’s got angst up the wazoo and is totally crazy. I went a little 50 Shades on it even. 

I guess the fears never end do they? They just get a little different.

What is weird is being a published author and yet not having a book out yet. I’ve got six months to wait until my Samhain book is released and then another few months after that before my Indulgence book is good to go (though release dates for that are yet to be finalised).  Which is SO LONG! Argh! And yet part of me is glad of the wait because I’m not sure if I’m ready for reviews and all the stuff that comes along with complete strangers reading your book. Especially the bad reviews and I will get ’em because if I’ve learned one thing from the New Voices comp it was that not everyone likes what you write.

Anyway, I’m rambling. I should be posting crafty-type stuff but instead I’ll leave you with a link to an awesome post by Maisey on balancing internal and external conflict in category romance. It’s really good. In fact, I heartily recommend you ask her questions in the comments if you have any because she is an expert in this type of thing.

And when you’ve done that, go here to Brenda Drake’s blog. She’s running a pitch competition with the Entangled eds for all the Entangled lines. First 200 comments and they’re up to 163 already so get thee hence quickly! I’m recommending this because I sold to Entangled through a pitch competition so it’s worth a crack!

Also if you’ve got a question about pitching or about Entangled then feel free to ask me!

Well, okay apart from actually writing the synopses.

And the HUGE subbing fear that is currently lurking around in my brain.

Yep, easy all right.

I think this might be a good time to remind myself of the speech Jane Porter gave at the close of the Romance Writers of Australia conference. She was incredibly inspirational and what she said really struck home to me at the time. She spoke about how long it too her to get published and the ups and downs of the industry. Then she then went on to describe a little incident with her son about how he was learning how to play baseball and how his coach was talking to him as he prepared to hit the ball, how the coach was telling him he owned the ball, this one was his, this one had his name written all over it, he could do it. The kid struck out about three times but the coach was constantly telling him how he could do it. How he could hit this one out of the park. And on the third time he did it.

She mentioned this in the context of how wonderful it is to have support when you’re doing something hard, but I got something out of it that was a little different. Because it gelled with something else that someone had told me earlier on in the conference – that we are the experts in our stories. No one else knows our stories like we do. No one else knows our characters like we do.

And I thought to myself that yep, I’m that kid. I’m standing there with a bat in my hand. And that ball? That ball is my story and I’ve been afraid of it. Afraid I’ll get it wrong somehow, that my characters will be wrong, that my conflict will be wrong, that my plot will be wrong. And for the past year, I’ve been kind of taking punts at the balls that keep being thrown at me, but I’m so afraid of them, I don’t even try swinging. Because deep down, I’m not sure I can hit them.

I am not owning my stories. They are owning me.

Well, at the end of her speech, Jane spoke about not giving in to despair. That your journey is your own, it’s not anyone else’s. That all you’ve got is you – but that’s the biggest strength there is.

And I thought ‘yeah, she’s bloody right’. I need to stop giving in to despair. Stop being afraid of my own stupid stories. Stop letting them own me. Because I am the expert here, not them. I write them, they don’t write me. I own them. They’re mine. And the more I own them, the greater the chance will be that I’ll hit one of them out of the ballpark.

It may not be the ones I’ve just written. But one day, one of those stories will, literally, have my name written all over it.

So there, inspirational speech/pep talk/coach for the week. Just remind me of it when the time comes to hit send!

Writing without fear. That’s what I was doing. And that’s what I HAVEN’T been doing for the past year. Nope, the past year, I’ve been writing scared. Scared of getting it wrong, scared of messing it up somehow. Certainly all the Rs I’d got seemed to indicate that I wasn’t getting something right and sure enough, that little belief kept getting reinforced and poor Jackie kept getting scareder and scareder. Her writing lost her spark. All the life got drained out of it. And, most important of all, she lost her joy. Nothing like a self-fulfilling prophecy huh?

Fear will do that to a writer. It’ll suck the creativity right out of you. And it’s a b*tch to overcome, let me tell you.

The good thing is that at least I have an idea of where I might, potentially, be going wrong. So at the moment I’m trying feel the fear and write it anyway. I’m trying to recapture what I felt when I wrote the Hammer Pants ms. I’m trying to just be in the moment with my characters and not think about whether this ms works for Riva or Presents. Or whether my hero is being too alpha. Or whether my heroine is being too unsympathetic. Or what to do with it when I type The End. I just need to switch all that off, immerse myself in the story, and start enjoying it again. I need to stop writing for an editor, for a reader, for my CPs. I need to write for me first.

This is something that a lot of people have been saying to me. And it’s not that I haven’t listened, it’s just that I haven’t understood why it’s important. Well, I do now.

So goodbye creepy fear. There is no place for you when I’m writing. You can haul your sorry skeletal carcass out of my study and you better do it before I go all Chuck Norris on your hide. Sure, I know you’ll be back when I hit the send button again but hopefully by the time that happens, I’ll have so many subs out that you won’t know which one to attach yourself to. So asta la vista baby!

And while fear is making itself scarce, I shall leave you with the words of wisdom my five year old daughter gave to me. When I told her about my R she said, ‘Were you writing quietly and carefully, mummy? You must always write quietly and carefully.”

Anyone else writing quietly and carefully? Or alternatively, giving fear a good roundhouse kick to the head?