Scared child (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I thought it might be time for an update. I’m taking a few more steps in my novel publishing journey this week. I’ve linked up with lulu.com and purchased a publishing package from them so I get some professional guidance in publishing my first novel, getting the cover design and formatting done and various other helpful support.
You know what I find? It’s still a bit confusing, but I’m taking it one step at a time, and that helps. But it’s also oddly frightening. I feel a bit like a child jumping at shadows in a darkened room. Kind of knowing there is nothing really there to be afraid of, but being afraid anyway. I can’t figure out if that is just because it’s all unknown, and complicated by so much business/marketing stuff I have to get my head around, or whether it’s the fear of taking works of this magnitude and personal importance to the public stage, or what…
Perhaps it’s the fear of not being successful – whatever that means in self publishing – but I actually don’t think my head has reached that far with its thinking yet (it may well get there eventually though…oh the joys of future fears once current ones are subdued!! 🙂 ) So I think it’s some amorphous fear driven by the process itself, and probably its unfamiliarity.
Weird or normal? For my fellow writers and RCC members, do you feel this type of fear sometimes or is it just me?
The writing was fine, even getting it edited didn’t feel scary, so I’m not entirely sure what is causing the feeling. Maybe it’s just I feel such an amateur at all this business, and that makes me nervous. It’s been many, many years since I was an amateur in my workplace and career field, so perhaps this unfamiliar feeling is actually just that sense of being a novice again. I don’t know.
Again, I ask: Am I alone? Or do you feel it too?
Still, each step is a positive – it takes away one layer of slight, strange dread. Each question answered makes me feel more comfortable. Each part of the project coming to fruition helps.
It was exciting to talk to people from lulu.com during the week – a call before work, at 5.30am my time when it isn’t even light, from America is kind of special, and really wakes you up. So, ever onward I guess…each step taken is a step away from the unknown and this strange, pervasive fear. 🙂
helenvalentina 