Reluctance to stand on the table
One of my mentors took some friends and me through a guided visualization of being a toddler and being told by our caretakers that we could not stand on the coffee table. Funny, I just told my granddaughter that very thing. The reason we were doing this visualization was to see when we got the idea in our heads that it’s not OK to stand out, to announce to the world “I am here and I’m awesome!” The trip down memory lane included tapping therapy, Emotional Freedom Techniques, which help to reduce anxiety around specific events. I did have an image in my mind of a living room that I lived in when I was two. Not sure if it was real or not. The goal of the session was to give us the confidence to reach for our highest stars.
Maybe it’s time to do that again because I still feel shy about standing on a table or a soapbox and declaring myself to the world. The critic inside of me stops me from jumping on the table before I even bend my knees. Why does this matter to me? I am a creative person. I always enjoyed writing when I was a kid. I have been doing research for a novel I want to write. But I haven’t committed 100% to writing it because I am afraid. Afraid it won’t be good, afraid even if it is good, no one will read it. I’m afraid of wasting my time and effort on something that won’t do anyone any good and could cause me a lot of suffering.
These fears are not all imagined. Writing my first book was not an easy process. The fun part was having the idea to do it and writing a first draft. The tough part was figuring out how to get it published and, once I found my publishing partner, going through the painful process of rewriting and editing. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my editors. But getting your work ripped apart over and over is not a confidence booster. I had four different editors, each with a different job of whipping me and my book into shape. Without them, I would not have ended up with a quality finished product. Editing was tough, proofreading a million times was tedious, and the publishing journey was expensive.
It was all worth it though, since I had written the book, it was important to me to get it to the finish line somehow, and I couldn’t have done it without my publishing company. It would be even more worth it if the book was getting into the hands of readers. That’s the next painful part, marketing the book. I hear that marketing is tough even with a traditional publisher, but with a hybrid publisher it is all up to the author. To be honest, I have boxes of books in my closet that are collecting dust.
Looking through the lens of “you get what you give”, I need a solid seed planting plan to meet my goals of:
1. Market my existing book
2. Remove fear and other obstacles to a next book
I will be using the Four Steps to meet these goals; decide what I want in one clear sentence, find someone who wants something similar, plan to help them, and execute the plan conscientiously, be happy about helping others.
Stand on the table crazy, my goal for book sales is 80 million. I came across two authors in one week who had sold that many copies of their books, and I thought it must be a sign. I decided it could be any format, any books I write, and can include books sold after I die, so I am hopeful I can meet the goal.
Here is some good news so that this little essay is not all Debbie Downer. Thanks to one of my dear friends who is acting as my agent, my book will be published in Taiwan soon. I am also looking into publishing in Vietnam, Germany, and translating into Spanish. My agent told me to write some material for the website and for snippets on social media because I am a writer and it’s good for writers to write every day. I am doing it right now. I am writing and it won’t be edited by a professional and I will have run on sentences and commas where the editors want periods.
If you haven’t read the first paragraph of Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, you can check that out to see that periods are not all they are cracked up to be.
This is me giving the finger to the critic.
What do you need to be able to stand on the table?
