Come this Tuesday and it will be three weeks since I released A Moment’s Worth. While three weeks normally feels like a relatively lengthy period of time to me, in this case scenario, it feels like a shorter period of time than that.
Consider me being overly optimistic in thinking that things would improve drastically from the time I wrote the post the Saturday following the book’s release, but in reality, things haven’t gotten too much better- and if they are, then they’re at a progressively slow rate. My stats on the book’s purchase history have improved only slightly, and apart from a review a man from Colorado left on Goodreads (for whom I shall remain grateful for), I haven’t gotten any reviews yet. With that, along with other pathetically petty issues that have been occurring in my life as of lately, haven’t been relieving me of any stress at all.
So that’s why I spent today walking; all over and any place worth walking- because walking is still a down-to-earth honest action almost any human can do. I just needed to clear the air, clear my mind, and just let go for a while. I needed time away from advice-givers and voices in general just to let me be.
I hate complaining… especially when I feel that I’ve already done so, but I can’t help but refuse to sugar coat what I’m feeling. I’m a perfectionist by nature and an indie author by choice, and so when those two lines cross, combined with the efforts I’m already making, it just has me under the weather of something I call “failure syndrome.”
Now this may be the case of being too hard on myself (which I’ve been known to do from time to time), but I feel that if I don’t keep going forward, I will just be destroying myself in the end. I remember reading a piece a few months back about how Hayao Miyazaki can’t sit through a screening from one of his own films without only noticing the flaws. Any Miyazaki fan might find that shocking, seeing nothing but the beautiful animation and incredible storytelling that he constantly portrays in each and every one of his films, but seeing that he’s more familiar with them than we as fans are, in a way it makes sense. But he doesn’t let himself fall under the “curse” as he calls it. His solution? He moves onward to his next project.
Of course my situation is a little different. Sure, I’ll be nitpicking my debut novel for the rest of my life, but the curse is in the matters of dissatisfaction over not obtaining enough readers to meet my expectations. But with the fact that it’s the month of August now, now is the best time to go forward with the ultimate distraction: Developing my second novel.
By “distraction” I mean that I’m still going to heavily promote A Moment’s Worth as best I can; it’s just that it’s not going to be the ONLY thing I’m focusing on. A writer’s job is to write, and trust me when I say my creativity doesn’t end with A Moment’s Worth; it’s merely the beginning. I know what I want to write next and now that I got the first one out in the world, it’s time to get started on the second one. It’s best to keep the juices flowing; to keep the muscle working; to keep me distracted.
This is a solution for me that I aim to use wholeheartedly. It’s a way of finding bravado in the resources and skills that I already have.
A Moment’s Worth is now available through the following venues: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iTunes. Please leave a review if you can, for my goal is to get a total of at least 20 reviews on all venues.
Check out its Goodreads page, which includes two trivia quizzes for all who’ve completed reading it already.
Lola By The Bay 