Fear - If You Can't Handle It Then Writing Isn't the Job for You

Here's a few things I've learned about fear after I sold:

It never goes away - I used to think that once I sold my first book, I'd never feel afraid of sending my writing out again. Wrong. Somehow the thought that the editor loved the last book makes sending in the next book harder. Because what if you've somehow stuffed up the next book?  It was diffcult to write - does that mean it's worse? What if the editor hates the story? What if she hates everything else I send in to her ever???

Sending stuff out to other publishers after you've been accepted by one is STILL scary - I'm waiting on a couple of other things and even though I've sold a couple of stories, I'm still as anxious and neurotic as I was before I sold those other ones. In fact, in many ways, fear of rejection was easier when I was unpublished because I kind of had nothing to lose. Now, I've sold a couple of times which means that theoretically it should be easier to sell again. Right? Right??? And if I don't sell, does this mean I suck? That the other publishers were wrong to accept me??

People will read my books - some people will love them. Some people will hate them. Some people will be disappointed because the books weren't as good as they assumed they would be. Some people will be pleasantly surprised because they were better than expected.  Some people will love the first one and yet hate the second. And vice versa. Some people will form opinions about me as a writer and some people will not hesitate to let me know what those opinions are. Which is scary.

Or what if no one reads my books? What if I don't sell and disappear into oblivion? There are thousands and thousands of writers out there - what makes my book any more special?
 

Skiing downhill really fast....

This whole year has been like skiing downhill very fast and knowing there's a turn coming up - you'll either fly off the edge of the mountain and crash spectacularly with lots of broken bones. Or you'll do a magnificent parallel turn in a shower of snow. One thing's for sure though, the turn is coming up and you don't know how it's going to go until you get there. And that's kind of scary.

With all this fear stuff, maybe I'm just neurotic and need to chill. Maybe no one else worries about these kinds of things and I'm being over-dramatic. Whatever the case, just know that if fear is something you don't want to have to deal with or is something that paralyses you then writing isn't the job for you. Because it doesn't go away once you've sold. It just changes. The stakes become higher. The further up the mountain you get, the further you have to fall.

After five years of this, I thought I'd become pretty good at handling all the worry and the fear. But nope. I think I've just got better at drinking wine. :-)

Anyone else find the fear difficult to deal with? What do you do in the face of it?

   

Wot I have Been Doing

Chocolate! From the Armani shop! Armani chocolate!

Haven't been blogging much these past couple of months. Mainly because I've been up to my neck in conferences, rewrites, submissions, edits, Dr Jax going to Milan and me being a solo mum, and deadlines. It's been a thing.

Anyway, I thought I'd give you an update on where I'm at so people don't think I've dropped off the earth or have stopped blogging or anything completely INSANE like that.

So here's what I've been doing:

I rewrote the Chessman. Took out the stuff I put in to make it more category. Darkened the conflict, hotted up the sexy-times, put in lots of angst, and then sent it to my editor at Samhain.
 
Then I rewrote most of the sheikh and included a couple of scenes that freaked me out to write and made wonder whether I am actually insane to put them in a M&B manuscript. Possibly I am. Anyway, only time will tell about that because I send it off.

Then turned my attention to my second Entangled book - working title The Player. I finished this before I left for Australia but I knew I'd done a completely pants job of it so had to rewrite most of it. Sigh. Sent the partial to my Entangled editor and got her thoughts and yes, I did have to rewrite the last half. Double sigh. Have just finished the rewrite today and will send that off tomorrow.

Next up is my third Samhain project - which is affectionately known as DVH AKA Dirty Virgin Hero. Yep, he's a hero! He's a virgin! And yet he's also dirty!  Have no idea how that's going to work out and I may yet be off my tree in thinking it will but I'm going to give it a go anyway. Got to keep yourself challenged.

THEN, once I've finished the partial of the DVH, I am going to look at starting my third Entangled book - working title The Boss.  Uptight, OCD hero. Naughty heroine. Am hoping it's going to be fun.

So there you have it. Wot I have been doing. And in there somewhere will be Falling for Finn edits and maybe paying more attention to The Gambler, another Presents ms that I had to put aside for all the other stuff.

Phew.

Oh and one other thing, just quietly because I'm not sure I can announce yet. So just pretend you didn't hear this. I sold the Chessman. :-)

Finn Blurb!

I have a tagline and blurb!  I am excited! And here's some more exclamation marks to show just how excited I am!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahem. Okay, so here we go...

Falling For Finn

When you’ve been burned, the heat of the moment is the scariest place to be.

Six months after a sexual assault, Anna Jameson has decided enough is enough. She’s sick of being a victim, of letting the experience have power over her. She wants her fear of physical intimacy gone, as in now. 

In the quest to reclaim her sexuality, she needs a man. A man she trusts absolutely. A man like her best friend, Finn.

Finn Shaw is all about taking risks. He does it every week on his extreme sports TV show. But there’s one boundary he’s never pushed, and that’s his friendship with Anna. When his hyper-intellectual family kicked him to the curb over his dyslexia, Anna stuck by him. 

Her request to become friends with benefits throws him for a loop. He can’t deny her anything, but this is a whole different ball game. Once they’re skin to skin, there will be no hiding the fact that he’s loved her for years.

When their chemistry burns out of control, Finn decides he’s the one who’s had enough. It’s time to break out of the friend box—and show Anna that risking her heart is a risk well worth taking. Even if it costs him her friendship. 

Warning: This book contains a strong-willed heroine who knows what she wants, a daredevil hero intent on showing her how much more she could have, sexy love scenes that’ll melt your heart, and a grand gesture you’ll need a tissue for.

This story has all my favourite things in it: friends-to-lovers, angst, sexy times, angst, an extreme sports, alpha hero, angst, single malt whiskey, oh yes and some more angst. :-)

I await February (19th everybody, mark it in your calendars! This instant, I tell you!) with trepidation and excitement...

Blogs: Are They Dead?

Okay so I'm bad. I haven't done a post for a while but that's because all my social media falls off my list of things to do when I have writing that needs doing. So really, I'm not bad. I'm good. :-) For those interested, I'm now working on edits for the next in my series for Entangled and will hopefully get that away in the next couple weeks.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was blogs.

Now, I love blogging. And I've been doing so for the past four years, sharing my whines and my angsts and the roller-coaster that is pre-publication with all of you kind enough to read this blog. But in these days of Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest and stuff, are blogs still relevant? I'm only wondering because apparently my blog should be on my website, which got me thinking about moving it. And that got me thinking about blogs in general and whether they're still of any interest to people.

My blog has always been geared towards writing and other writers but when my first book comes out, I'd like to think that maybe the ten or so people who buy my book who don't know me, might come along and have a look at the blog. And perhaps what they see won't interest them because, if they're not writers, why would they be interested in reading about the writing process? About craft and whatnot? Which means I probably should do posts about other stuff. *cue panic*

So what I want to know is this - is it worth it? Will people still want to read blog posts when everything is on Twitter or Facebook? 

I happened to be sitting with Randy Ingermanson, the snowflake guy, at the RWNZ conference during lunch one day (namedrop, namedrop), and I asked him what he thought about blogs since he'd just done a great presentation about online marketing. He thought blogs were better than Twitter, mainly because a blog post stays here online forever, whereas a tweet is gone in an instant. Blog posts do your marketing for you in other words. But this only works if you enjoy blogging and if you're good at it.

So anyway, I'm still thinking about this. I probably should move my blog off Blogger and put it onto my website whatever I decide, but I don't want to go through all the hassle if blogs are indeed dead.

What does anyone else think? Do you still look at blogs? Or do you prefer other media?