The massively uphill climb

homer-mountain — “I made it all the way to the-aw crap! It just keeps going! I give up. You beat me, mountain!”

I marvel at the ingenuity of my internal saboteur. This week was supposed to be focused (and I use the word ‘focus’ very loosely) on the next steps to take in book promotion, with a side order of planning the next project. Oh, there was also a blog post about author branding thrown in there too.

So I hopped over to the admin page for this very blog. With a concealed snicker, my inner saboteur makes a suggestion. “Hey, why don’t we take a look at your yearly stats? I bet you’ve reached a huge audience.” And like a sucker, I take a look. I read the miniscule number of unique visitors who have shown up here over the last year and my ego deflated like a cheap balloon.

Did I have dreams (or less charitably, delusions) that there was a legion of fans following along with every post, eager for news of the next book? Of course I did. That’s how human beings get through their days. Imagination! But along comes “facts” and “reality” to rain on my parade.

I’m not going to lie to you all and say that I quickly picked myself up and kept trucking along. I was under the metaphorical blankets for a couple of days. Success seemed totally impossible. Yeah, I can keep churning out stories until the end of time, but you can’t pay your mortgage with stories.

So how did I pick myself up and go back at it? Not easily, I can tell you that much. (lack of income woes go to the next level when Christmas is looming around the corner). But here’s the recipe so far:

1: acknowledge successes, despite their size. Hoping for the easy big win made me blind to the little wins that keep happening. A win is a win.

2: Get stubborn and feisty. Yeah it’s not going gangbusters right now, but I’m going to keep at it. Wanna fight about? That’s what I thought, internal critic. Shut up and let me work.

3:Embrace the weirdness. This is the life I’m supposed to be living. Even with all the bumps, disappointments and panicked moments of being directionless, writing is what I do. And I want people to read the stuff I write, so I am going to keep putting it out there.