Writing a Book is Scary AF. I think the scariest part is when it’s finished.
When I first shared Welcome to the Millennial Age: An Infographic Guide with friends and family, I wasn’t sure how they’d react to it. I mean, it’s kind of a weird book, and, you know … I wrote it.
Every stage of a creating a book is challenging, both emotionally and practically speaking. Deciding to put the pen to paper (well, fingers to keyboard). Deciding to keep going even after you ate the first draft. Deciding to finish the bloody thing after you’re soooooooo sick of looking at it. Deciding to have friends read it and give you feedback. Deciding to accept the valid criticism and make more edits. Deciding to pitch it to literary agents. Deciding to keep going after getting rejected. Deciding to pay for a copy editor.
And then, the hardest part, in my book (no pun intended): deciding to promote your book. Deciding to share your Amazon link with friends and family.
Any author will tell you it’s 100 times easier to promote literally any other author’s work than to promote your own work. Unless you’re a classic narcissist, the self-doubt is part of the process.
Self-doubt is that annoying and sometimes toxic yet well-intentioned friend who checks in on you every now and then, usually right after your other friend self-confidence has been visiting for a while. They just want to stop by and make sure you aren’t running off into the sunset with ambition. Before they leave, they’ll want to see that you’ve got a good grasp on the real potential for your hopes and drams. They can occasionally offer excellent insight. But they often don’t actually know what the fuck they are talking about. It’s best to treat them like an unreliable narrator, like a suggestion from ChatGPT that you might want to research yourself, because it might be hallucinating. Chat GPT is only as good as whatever shit is on the internet. Self-doubt is only as good as whatever shit your subconscious mind believes about you and the world around you.
My approach has been to not kill self-doubt, nor to totally ignore it. But I don’t really trust it either. They have a seat at the table, for sure, but they aren’t running the show. Self-doubt likes to sometimes partner up with other visitors like pessimism, laziness, and MY MOTHER’S VOICE IN MY HEAD, so it’s not always easy to know where they really stand. Are they trying to help me, or sabotage me? They’ve been known to do both.
A book is such a personal creation, something that really comes from WHO YOU ARE (I mean, it should be, I think, if it’s a good one). That makes self-doubt super interested.
Before I was even close to publishing Welcome to the Millennial Age, self-doubt came around to ask some questions: Would anyone actually read it? If someone actually did read it, would they like it? Would anyone laugh at my dumb jokes? Would they think it was stupid?
Self-doubt brought some friends, like existential dread, who wanted to know if there was meaning in all of the work I put into this book?
Broke-ass money lover was pretty sure I should stop trying to make books happen and… get a job at Amazon instead of using Amazon to try to sell books.
Both fun-love and easy-going wondered if the time I spent creating the book would have been better used getting high at the beach?
Real question.
But here I am, having had about 27 visits from self-doubt on the journey with Welcome to the Millennial Age. And even though Eternal Optimist’s biggest dream’s have not (yet!) materialized, self-doubts biggest fears have also not materialized. No one is laughing at me, but a few people have laughed at my book. Which was the goal! So far, everyone who has read it has told me they liked it: it made them laugh, they learned things, it made them smile. Since I like to surround myself with honest people, I think it’s a good sign.
My cousin told me she was literally dying of laughter alone in the living room for two hours. It sounds so funny, but it actually made alllllllll the work feel worth it.
Julie’s mom was super kind about the process and helped with some basic edits to the draft. She bought her book club members copies, and one of them took the time to find my website to message me and tell me they loved it.
Sometimes when you write things, you wonder if the words will go anywhere but into a void….a big, cavernous void, a black hole. When even just one person reads it and tells you they like it, it’s just a confirmation that you aren’t in a black hole, you are still in normal space-time.
So far, three local bookstores have confirmed that they will sell my book, which is awesome! Fingers crossed they sell copies and it can stay on the shelves. But I’m just happy that I made it this far with Welcome to the Millennial Age. Even if I don’t have a traditional publisher, and even if I don’t ever sell more than 200 copies, I finished the book, and I got it onto a bookstore shelf. Self-doubt was wrong about all those steps. They will duke it out with Eternal Optimism regarding what happens next.
