When You ARE the Other Shoe...
It's going to happen eventually. Someone is going to read my book and not like something about it. They may say something to me directly, comment about it to a friend who's been enthusiastic and supportive (who will therefore report it back to me), or their negative response may end up on my Amazon review page. I started prepping myself for this facet of reality well-before I started pushing the publishing boulder over the side of the mountain. You can't please everybody 100% of the time, everybody has an opinion, and historically internet commentators can be down-right vicious. That's the risk you take when you put your work out into the world.
Almost a full month after publication, and with the 100-books-sold mark creeping up on me, I'm still waiting. Granted, I'm still waiting for reviews to hit my Amazon page in general, but I'm also still waiting to get that first negative review. It's like waiting for the guillotine to drop. You don't want it to happen, but the antici.........pation is almost worse. There's this anxiety-riddled part of me that wants it to happen so that I can lose my head for a bit, sew it back onto my shoulders, and prove to myself that I can survive it when it happens. To a point, I kind of anticipate that part of the delay in working on Volume 2 stems from that anxiety.
Which brings me back to the blog title. I've always had a "Plan for the worst, but hope for the best" mentality. I resonate well with the meme "I've got 99 problems and 86 of them are completely made up scenarios that I've made up in my head and am stressing about for no logical reason." I'm a worrier; an anxiety pack-mule. I come by it honestly, just ask my mother.
So when every response I've gotten so far from my readers for "Ash to Ashes" has been positive, nay enthusiastic!, I get a little suspicious. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm one of the most self-critical people I know, and I absolutely love my book. (No, seriously, it still makes me laugh every time I read certain sections.) I love hearing how much people are enjoying it! But having people cite their favorite lines and scenes without a backhanded "but..." to follow up with? For some reason it never occurred to me that people might actually just like my book. I wasn't prepared for this scenario. I'm still trying to process that notion.
So, as it turns out, up to his point I have been the other shoe waiting to fall and smash my ego like a bug. I've been my own critic, ready to shred my confidence with my razor words and opinions. I've been the boogeyman hiding in the digital recesses of the internet waiting to shuck and devour my dreams of success.
I'd say it's high time I knocked that shit off and moved on to the next project.
