February 8, 2023
Emotional State: Breathe, Just Breathe
Writing & Life
I’m in the final countdown of getting Book 2, The Dark Space Between, ready for primetime and I have to keep talking myself off the ledge. There’s so much to do and I want to make sure it’s the best book it can be. And that ledge is really tempting.
One thing you learn when self-publishing, is how to manage your time, keep track of all the things you need to do, and most importantly, manage your mindset. It’s stressful juggling all the balls and not dropping any. Will I drop some? I hope not, but I’m the only one who can make sure I don’t.
The biggest drama is the cover. I’ve got the cover ready, but when I set it up, I didn’t have the exact page count and that’s a problem. The spine needs to accommodate your page count, one more page is fine, but 60+? Yikes. So, in the DIY spirit, I’ve been working with the PSD file of my cover to sort out how to tweak it and make it work.
No one really talks about the timing of it, though. Well, they do, but they don’t tell you that you need to have your book formatted before you do the cover. And who’s that organized? Not me, at least not this round. What this cover snafu tells me, though, is that I need to have the book as finalized as possible and formatted before I do my cover.
Which means getting the book done much sooner than I expected or planned for. Yikes!
I can tweak my schedule moving forward, but it’s going to be a cluster for later books that I’ve planned. Word count can only do so much. Formatting adds pages in a big way because you add chapter titles, paragraph formatting, frontmatter, backmatter, and all the stuff in between. But I’m on it and I can make it work. It’s just not as easy as I planned.
The other issue, which I already knew about, is that you’ll reach a point where you just can’t look at one more word. One more paragraph. You want it to be perfect, but please don’t make me read it all over again for the twentieth time. I’ll do it, but I really don’t want to.
Going back to mindset, all this stress compounds when an issue like a cover change gets in the way. And don’t get me started on the crazy idea I had to set up preorders. Why did I do that again?
It doesn’t matter. This is where I’m at. By hook or by crook, I’ll get this book done. It may not be perfect (it’ll never be perfect), but it’ll be as good as I can get in the time I’ve given myself.
Like the song says, “Breathe. Just breathe.” I’ll get to the other side and may need to tweak things again, but isn’t that why we self-publish? To control all the things? Maybe.
Or maybe we’re all just gluttons for punishment.