Dear Marianne has taken me to task for yesterday’s post about how disappointed I am with my blog. (And, while you’re over there, you should check out the Australian cover for CT Fashionista It rocks!) However, what dear Marianne doesn’t know is that when I posted it, I was disappointed with just about everything, from my blog to my capabilities as a copy editor to my choice of shoe. If you’d asked me at that moment, I would have said that (Secret) Society Girl sucked, too. So it wasn’t so much the blog that was a bit blah, but me.
[Insert giant self-flagellation here]
Probably to be expected that I’d get a small case of mean reds after the ecstasy of “Sold Book Weekend.” I expected a sort of soft flitting to the ground, but there was a bit of a thump. Not a big thump, but a sort of, “right, now, back to work, and don’t forget to pick up your dry cleaning and see if chicken thighs are on sale at Whole Foods” kind of thump. What, you mean I still have to deal with rush hour on the Metro? With the fact that cingular is overcharging us about $40 per billing cycle? With the idea that dinner does not cook itself, the cough won’t go away, and congealed tea is really hard to remove from the inside of my mug? How can that be? I sold a book on Thursday. And now, you know, I have to finish it. No pressure. 
My agent was right when she said I was the same girl I was before. She’s very smart. I really should listen to her more often (you know, up it from 99.8% of the time to 99.9%):
Which brings me back to my opening thought here: when an author lands their first book contract, there’s the potential for anxiety and pressure, but there’s also an exhilarating freedom that comes in knowing your work has found a home. That inner place of questioning is silenced, and for the first time in your life you can go about the business of writing without the handmaiden of doubt—that doubt about whether the work will sell, or if it speaks to the market. Later, new choking doubts will appear, concerns about sell-throughs, and reviews, and packaging, and option books, and cruel bloggers, and the like. But for this glorious sliver of time, your newly contracted job is heartbreakingly simple. You are a writer. Just what you always wanted to be.
Right. The book speaks to the market. I just need to keep doing what I was doing and everything will be fine. I wrote CoaSSG with no thought to contests or rules, and it worked out well, so why impose them now that the hard part (i.e. selling) is over?(And yes, D, I’ve got that MotB on.)
A bunch of comments on the previous post said they liked to see the day-to-day writer anxieties. Well, you got one yesterday, people. Today, you get optimism.
And maybe, if you’re very good, an ode to my iPod.
April 27th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
When I had my first baby, I’d been gushed over for months. People would give up their seats for me on the bus, help carry stuff, generally treat me as something special. Then the blessed day arrived and my baby made his entrance. For 3 or 4 hours, the gushing attention continued, then everyone disappeared (he was born on Dec. 23 so people had other stuff to do) and I realized I was alone. From an overabundance of attention to zilch. Not only that, I had to take care of the baby. I’d never even changed a diaper. While the enormity of what has just happened is sinking in, the hormones kicked in. All I wanted to was crawl under the bed with my Tylenol 4’s and hide from the world.
Writing a book (and selling it, I imagine) is a similar experience except you don’t get stretch marks and nobody offers to prescribe you narcotics afterwards. But the plunge from elation to the doldrums can be swift. It evens out eventually. Oh, okay, it might take two bags of Mother’s Cookie Parade assortment to get you through, but eventually you feel normal and back to yourself.
April 28th, 2005 at 9:19 am
Wow. What a story, Rene! And what a great lesson for me to learn (never conceive a child in March) — no, just kidding, the bit about the plunge. I think that’s exactly how I felt: I made the baby, and everyone looked at it and admired it and sent flowers and presents, and now they are leaving me on my own to, you know, raise the silly thing.
Finish the book, make it rock, etc. I gotta look at my baby and say, “You and me, babe. We’re going to do this.”
April 28th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
Well, good thing Marianne spanked you. Or I would have, had I wound my here sooner. And I think 99% is a good, good thing.
Work the mantra, baby.
D
April 28th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
Whoops…make that wound my WAY here sooner. I obviously “wound”, but left brain back with my blackberry.