For the last two weeks, every morning has been a coin flip.
photo credit: Micah Sittig
Heads: I wake up excited, thinking, “Oh, Awesome Fear-Wrangling is gonna sell a zillion copies! More than enough to allow me to quit the Day Job and not have to try to work 14-hour days in winter! Wahoo!”
Tails: I wake up thinking, “Rubbish. I’ll sell a few copies, maybe, but not enough for that.”
Two-Face and the Smart Chick
Old Catherine, Catherine-of-the-undistinguished-past, would get up and, depending on the coin toss, would either:
- work with insane optimism for sixteen-hour stretches,
- sigh and half-heartedly pound away in grudging drudgery, for maybe three hours, before quitting
New Catherine, increasingly-awesome-Catherine, has a different plan:
Whatever the coin comes down as, I get up and do the exact same amount of work.
Whether I think it will be a gigantic success (defined in my terms by selling a hundred copies) or a pleasant exceeding of the minimum standards, or even a gigantic flop… I still spend the same number of hours getting work done.
BUT… not always the same work.
Working on the WHEE days
My energy is higher on the excited days, natch, so I tend to write guest posts, hold a dozen Twitter conversations simultaneously, comment on other blogs, write long and interesting emails, and catch up on forums.
Working on the SIGH days
I often use the pessimistic days to do the work that is best not done by me in a upbeat, everything’s-gonna-be-A-OK mood: like financial projections, editing, and contingency planning. Or stuff I “forget” to do when I’m at my most energised, like the fiddly maintenance tasks: updating plugins, unfollowing dodgy Twitterers, completing tasks from my List of Tweaks, doing the balance sheets.
But when you gotta…
Today the coin came down tails. Although I made three sales in my sleep and I had a Copyblogger article, for criminy’s sake, come out this morning (and another four excellent posts), I still don’t feel convinced that I’ll sell enough copies any time soon to allow me to quit the Day Job.
Tough.
This is still a launch day, and I have plans to be tweeting, replying to comments, and chatting in a live webinar with the charming David Burch. And while I’m not feeling naturally joyous and bubbly (partly due to the third consecutive day of overcast) I still have to do those things, as awesomely as I can. Whether I would much prefer to be wrapped in blankets playing computer games doesn’t matter. What matters is there is work to be done!
This is an acquired skill.
I am getting better at ignoring my inner voices when they get in the way of the work. It’s like building your writing muscles, I’m finding. You can work on increasing your ability to push on in the times when the motivation is pale and colourless, and all that’s left is grim old Duty. And you don’t have to do a half-assed job, either. In fact, I bet people who listen to the webinar (if they haven’t read this article first) won’t notice that I’m having to push for the first, oh, five minutes. After that, I expect the energy will come on its own.
You do rise to the challenge, did you know that?
I didn’t.
Old Catherine used to quit before she began if it looked too hard or she was too tired. I didn’t know that once you start you almost always find enough resources to keep going.
I know it now. I use it now. And here I am, launching a big awesome resource with a dozen interviews and my happy smily picture is staring at you from a dozen websites. So whether or not I sell enough copies for my Big Goal, I’m still a success.
I kick the ass of Old Catherine, that’s for sure.
Where’s Catherine today?
For the people who asked, here are the places I’m interviewed, posting, and giggling.
Being interviewed by Sinclair of Self Activator
Being interviewed by LaVonne for The Complete Flake
Conducting a video interview for the Grandma Mary Show
Laughing my ass off while being interviewed by The Tiny Soprano
Writing about positioning for Nathan Hangen
Writing about kicking the technical blues for Mel and SuperWAHM
Writing about confusing the medium with the message for Beth and the Fiction-Writing Directorate
Kathleen’s review of Awesome Fear-Wrangling at O-Copy (and a bit more here)
Writing about practical fear-management for writing at Copyblogger
Waving for the camera in Ash’s beautiful article about fear at The Middle Finger Project
Oh! And of course, I have to say this bit!
There are awesome bonuses today if you sign up for Awesome Fear-Wrangling. So if you’re thinking about it and you’re not sure, ask me questions! We both win if you buy it sooner rather than later. (Or rather than not at all, of course!)
So if you have questions: send me an email or ask them in the comments !