I’ve never been very vocal on social media. I lurk and click “thumbs-up” on occasion, but I rarely post content of my own.
I think part of it is laziness. Perhaps it takes a certain type of energy that I expend too quickly doing other things, and by the time I think “I should post something” I’m too exhausted to do it. Other times, I sit in front of my keyboard and have no idea what to write.
Like when I was writing my manuscript, I should put myself on a schedule. Maybe I could post something every Sunday. Even if it’s just a small update. Just something to let everyone know that I’m still alive and active.
The reason I thought about it this weekend is that I finally received the tracking number for my shipment. The estimated delivery is July 31, 2018.
While I am super excited, I also have anxiety about it. I worry about the quality of the prints. Everything looked fine electronically, but will everything be bound properly? Will the spacing look as I expect it to look? I sometimes sit and think about how hard I worked on it. And then immediately follow up with thinking about the things I would do differently. And then following up with thinking that the current version is bad because I didn’t do things differently.
When I get locked into that cycle, I recall a post I read about Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling. I’ll share them in another post along with my thoughts on them, but one is “Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.” That rule reduces my anxiety. I wanted to put something out into the world, and I did. It may not be the exact version of what I wanted, but I can do better next time. As I work on Book 2, I really feel that I am growing as a writer. LEVEL UP!!