And Some Days I Choose To Count My Blessings…

I woke up early this morning to the buzzing of my phone. Well–earlier, actually, because I had to let the dogs out, but I went back and napped again for an hour. Trudged back to sit on my chair in my home office and stare at the trees outside. It’s gloomy, raining, a reflection of my up and down mood over the weekend.

Cover reveal for The Wolf of Oren-yaro was last Friday and as always, anything that has to do with marketing my books has me up in nerves. Contacting bloggers, trying to “talk up” my book…I hate that. I write out emails that say, “Maybe this will interest you,” but in the back of my head I’m thinking, “Who are you kidding? Who the hell are you to even ask this person to spend time on your work?” I’ve written and scrapped more emails than I care to mention, and often times I’ve had to push myself into clicking “send” because my finger hovers over that mouse button longer than it should. The impostor syndrome is well and alive, made more poignant by the fact that I’m a self-published author who doesn’t near sell the numbers that would put me on even footing with a mid-list traditionally published author who barely makes enough from their royalties to feed their cat. Self-doubt turns into an inner critic who tells me it’s because of your craft, that’s why you’re not up there. 

So I turn back to work some more. The toil surrounding the craft is my greatest tool to pushing through another day. “Giving up” is not an option. I love this too much. I have done this too long, too hard, to even remember what I’d do with myself if I don’t write. “Killing myself with exhaustion” may well be on the table, but that’s a different story altogether. Last night, I stayed up late penning out yet another trilogy, one that I’ve been struggling with for at least a decade, and things just started clicking into place. I realized that I can write this thing now. Not just the first novel, but the entire trilogy…the pattern, the dance, the relationships, are all there, and I have all the tools necessary to discover them. Wonderful craft stuff, like music in my head.

I am still writing.

And that’s big, I think. That my body wears out faster than my desire to get these stories out there. That my love for the craft is so great that I actually got here because I wanted to be in a position to write. Because I remember five years ago telling myself I needed to get here, that I needed to crawl through that engineering thing, bite back my anxieties, get a job, save money, stabilize my family, build a house, just so I can write, and it was the easiest thing in the world to say, “Okay. Let’s do this.” And I did it. And now I’m here.

Some people luck out with their debuts. Some break through after years of hard work. I did the opposite, I think.

I am being told that my best work happened from about a certain point of Sapphire’s Flight till now. This is always crazy for me to hear, especially when you realize that it’s around that point that I started giving zero fucks about everything and throwing myself at this 100%. What happened? “You live and breathe this,” my husband said. And of course, I still feel like apologizing because when I’m actively writing something, shit gets left undone. Beyond writing, taking care of the kids and dogs, and cooking, everything else backslides. The closet is a mess. I was painting the basement over the summer and stopped halfway through. I zone out during conversations. I’ve reached a point where I even forget to eat sometimes.

I still want this to start paying for itself, of course. I mean, there’s people I have to feed. Artists I have to pay.

But for a writer–for an artist–to hear the sound of my keyboard working to draw away the joy and ache in order to give it form for others to see? Ah, blessings, indeed…