Hey everyone,
I put the final touches on my book proposal this week (which I’ll be able to tell you about very soon, yay!) I asked Sam for the toughest critique he’d ever given anyone and boy, did he deliver.
This means, of course, that I’m now back to editing my freelancing books, and because I’m nothing without a deadline, I’ve given myself until the end of the month to get them done. This is ambitious, at best, but hey, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t set myself unrealistic targets and then beat myself up for not meeting them. Wine and cake will be involved.
I’ve been loving working on Bookish Pursuits these last few days. You know when you create something that you’re so in love with that you go out of your way to make it special and then you go over and above to make it extra extra special? That’s kind of what I’ve been doing. One of the authors who joined is about to start pitching agents for her novel, and so, having just gone through this process myself, I had a long chat with her and explained how I approach pitching agents. (I pitched 23 agents for my novel and, so far, have had 11 requests for fulls and two offers.)
I’m putting together a list of literary agents for the group so they don’t have to start the process from scratch (so far, I have a list of 600). I’m also, as I’ve mentioned before, making detailed notes about the process of republishing and relaunching my eight indie books under a new name. Sam and I had a meeting about the launch strategy for these books (which we recorded and made available inside Bookish Pursuits).
One of the things I’m most proud of is that I have now had 28 consecutive months of book sales, that is, I have earned an income from my indie books each and every single month for over two years, without missing a single one. I’m extremely proud of this, and it’s something that I had long envisioned when I spoke about passive income from books. Now it’s happening. The numbers are still low, but they exist, which is really exciting to me because now, my next goal is simply to increase these numbers. And that’s far easier than creating them from scratch.
When Sam and I were discussing the relaunch of my books, I told him that I’d been reading and taking a bunch of trainings and getting ideas on different ways and strategies to release them. “Is there an obvious winner?” he asked. “One way that’s better than the others?”
I have to admit, I surprised myself with the answer, because even though this is always the answer I wanted to give, it’s not the answer I always have given. And my answer was this: “Yes, but when I follow strategy for the sake of following strategy, I always end up feeling like shit.” Sam said then to forget the strategy and we talked about what might make me feel good. And that is the strategy we’ve picked now. The strategy that feels good.
When you feel good about the work you’re doing, and the way you’re doing it, you let go of the attachment to results. If you’ve tortured yourself to get something done in order to achieve a certain result, then the result matters. It matters a whole lot. And if you don’t get the result, you feel like you’ve tortured yourself for nothing, wasted your time, put yourself through hell for no reward. You’re less likely to do it again. But when you’re loving what you do, when you’re enjoying the process of it, the result is still very much wanted, but you’re not dependent on it to bring you the payoff. The work becomes the payoff. And it doesn’t matter that you failed. You’re happy to go do it all over again because the process was so fun.
I don’t know why suffering is so romanticized in the writing world. I honestly don’t get it. Because now that I actually have fun in my writing, I can’t imagine doing it any other way.
Obviously, in Bookish Pursuits, fun will be prioritized. Because when ambition meets joy and ease, great things happen. Message me if you’d like to come join us.
More tomorrow.
Cheers,
Natasha