I made you.
I love you.
I made you because I love you. So why is it so hard for me to interact with you?
Hitting that phase of adult life where most of my friends are getting married and having babies has introduced me to the concept of postpartum depression. And though I’m a single person with no children, hearing about what it’s like to experience postpartum depression made my ears perk up because it sounded so familiar.
But not with a baby. With a book.
It’s been over a year since the publication and release of my first book. It hasn’t felt at all the way I expected it to. I haven’t felt much of anything, to tell you the truth. I’ve just been sort of numb.
The last few weeks before launch were a whirlwind. Cover art was ready but had to be formatted for different editions. Formatting the inside of the book proved to be more of a struggle than anticipated. And since I’m doing most things myself, any hype had to be my job, too.
We were going full speed ahead.
And then suddenly…nothing.
The book was done. It was ready to sell. Some people had already ordered it (thanks, family!). But now what?
The launch party came and went in a daze. I felt loved and supported and took great pleasure in the specialty cake my mom ordered that looked like a copy of my book.
For the first month, sales were nothing to sneeze at. Then, as expected, they suddenly dropped off. My family and friends who were going to buy it had done so, and now it was time to start the real marketing, to find audiences who didn’t know me personally.
After all my research, I’d gone from a clarified set of steps to absolutely nothing. Creating your own momentum is a huge part of being an artist (especially if you’re trying not to be a starving one) but it is extremely hard, especially once the fanfare of the launch is past.
Now I know I should’ve started marketing long before I did and before the launch, but you live and learn. Granted, a variety of confounding factors have come into play. Namely, COVID has made everything weird. The marketing of my book has had jerky starts and stops because I planned for so much of it to be done in person at events, and safety concerns have put that on hold. But it’s more than that.
I was afraid to interact with my book. Afraid to even look at it. It had already gone to print, so what if I flipped it open and found an error that would be a huge hassle to fix?
Worse yet, I felt somehow unworthy of it. I made this book, but where were the welcoming fans to love these characters? I felt like I had let them down by not having a following already. And what if someone actually does read the book, and then they trace it back to plain old me? I don’t feel like I can stand up to the attention even if and when it does come.
Basically, I’ve spent over a year avoiding my own work in order to drown out the resounding question of Now what?
How do I market?
How do I make fans?
What am I going to do now?
And will this ever be worth it, or will it stay forever as some sort of public art project, sitting in the back corners of the internet with no one who wants to buy it or even realizes it exists? It’s like I’m embarrassed to have put myself out there because it hasn’t really panned out yet.
I thought I would feel somehow accomplished or like I’d checked something off my bucket list. But I don’t. I just feel numb.
But I’m not giving up. I had a small breakthrough when I sat down one night to read over a section of my published book and found myself still there half an hour later, wiping my eyes over an emotional part. I’m going to take it as a good sign. Like Robert Frost said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” So I have something good if it can still move me to tears, even if that feels terribly vain.
I still believe in my work. And I know I will find my audience, or rather cling to the idea because that’s the only way it’s going to happen.
This isn’t the end of the road for this book, and it isn’t the end of the road for me. It’s only a crossroads.
And it’s just the beginning.
Onward, my dear story! Soon, you will have a younger sibling.
