One More Push!

 

One more push, aaaaand…Poof!  We’re done.

But there’s not a cute bundle to hug and love on with this kind of birth.
Just a screen saying in 24-72 hours your book will be live.

Kind of anticlimactic until the anxiety sets in.
Is it really ready?
Is it proofed enough?
What about formatting?
What about my life being out there for people to read about?

But that’s when invaluable friendship showed up and brought us back to reality.  We celebrated with some home-made hummus, cheese, crackers and a choice tasty drink.  Then we took some more pictures and made fish tacos.

Nothing too fancy.  But something money can’t buy!

Walking Through the Hallway of Haters

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It’s a scary feeling, and most of the time it’s just imagined… But sometimes, it’s real. Everyone has an opinion and a unique perspective which may or may not line up with ours.  What do we do with that?

Actually, there’s only two things we can do.  We can let it bother us,

or not.

I admit, the first half of my life, and sometimes still, I let it bother me.  After all, I like to be liked.  I like to like. If you could call me anything, you could call me a liker.

We haven’t encountered any haters, yet.  Our friends who know us, who really know us, have been overwhelmingly sweet and curious about The Crick Code.  We are not concerned with them.

Not everyone knows us though, and people, even family members, can be mean. Motives and facts may be questioned.  Opinions may be shared before even reading the book. What do we do with that?

I have to admit, we’ve a little fearful about our goal to publish.  It touches on all kinds of tender ideas:  cult religion, family, oppression of women, rebellion, fear, freedom and love.

And then there’s the writing part:  Did I edit enough?  Did I tell too much, and not show enough?  Did I explain enough?  

It’s a strange thing, creating something and putting it out to the world to be judged.  I suppose everyone who has ever published has met with these fears to some degree or another.  It’s just our first time.

We’ve both had to face many of our own internal conflicts along this journey, but at the end of the day, it’s all about growing up and facing those fears head on.  Meg Cabot said it best:

“Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear; The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all.”