In 7 weeks time my second book will be published. I'm excited, slightly nervous and being visited fairly constantly by my old friends Fear and Doubt. You may have met them at some stage in your life too - they're a right pair!
Fear likes to snuggle up tight against your ear and whisper that you missed some important detail - your files are incomplete, you only sent half the book, the file is so messed up that it will infect every other file in the Lightning Source, Amazon and Smashwords vaults resulting in the loss of millions of books from the face of existence; your book won't sell and all the money that your hard-working husband has given you from his wages to fund your little venture will be gone, other bills will go unpaid, you'll lose your home, your kids will have nothing to eat, you won't be able to afford pencils or paper and will have to write on the walls in your own blood! (Fear's a tad theatrical.)
Doubt creeps up on you, yells urgently and darts off again - no-one will read your book because it's not good enough, you're not good enough, you weren't 'properly' published and so you're nothing but a fraud and a pathetic, egotistical fool; someday soon you'll be found out, people will start pointing at you and demanding that you be sent back to your writing cave and promise never to inflict your words on humanity again! (Doubt does a lot of arm-waving and eye-bulging whilst yelling which is very distracting.)
As you can see they travel around together for a reason - they complement each other beautifully - Fear feeds Doubt and Doubt fuels Fear. Now, I don't for a moment believe that I'm the only person in the universe that they visit and I'm fairly certain that writers and self-publishers aren't the only folks that they choose to pick on but I'm willing to bet that most people spend a huge amount of energy projecting a 'Fear & Doubt? Don't know them' façade rather than admitting to having several Pity and Panic parties a day/week/month. Of course, I may be incorrect about this and be the only....nope, that's doubt whispering again. Ha! Caught you out there you naughty little bubble of angst!
I've listened to Fear and Doubt's thoughts on self-publishing another book and yes, their arguments are pretty sound and sensible (the fact that they use voices eerily similar to my own probably helps) but I'm going ahead anyway - 'Fortune favours the brave' and all that jazz - so next week I'm going to do a cover reveal for my new book here on this Blog, publish snippets from the book for the six weeks after and then on publication day I'm going to bake cupcakes and have a Courage and Confidence party which Fear and Doubt will most certainly NOT be invited to!
You, however, will be very welcome :-)
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