Today’s the day!
Shut Up and Write: The No-Nonsense, No B.S. Guide to Getting Words on the Page is out in the world!
I’m excited!
And now totally out of exclamation marks.
I have to admit, the best part about this book launch at this current moment is that it’s done.
And yes, while book marketing is a continuous activity and you don’t ever want to take your foot off the gas pedal completely, launching something is its own brand of stress and late nights and freak outs and I’m quite happy to be done with it.
Especially since I started working on the next non-fiction book this week and it’s already shaping up to be something I’m incredibly proud of. Let’s not even think about that launch yet.
I am also, I might add, knee deep in the revisions of my novel. I feel like I’ve ripped it apart to shreds, the bits of paper lying all around me, and now the work ahead is to gather all those shredded bits of paper and put them back together. This is impossible. So instead of what I envisioned to be a quick 75-page addition, I’m now looking at a complete overhaul. It’s a lot of work, but I’m incredibly happy about this because already, with the additional pages I’ve written so far (45!), I feel like I’ve elevated the book to a much higher level.
I want to end by offering you some hope about your own unfinished projects.
Last year, in September, I quit a six-figure writing job. I only lasted there three weeks before realizing that I’m completely unsuited for employment, even if it is the work-from-home and well-paying type. I was miserable and beating myself up about this massively when my mother-in-law suggested that I take out some time each day to feed my creative work.
“Still waiting to see a novel of yours in my hands one day,” she wrote.
That must have provided the spark, because suddenly my dreams were on fire. I thought about what I wanted to do with my life (write books). I talked to my husband about realistic ways to achieve my goals while still taking on work that helps with the finances of the family. The answer wasn’t easy, but it was simple: I could take one hour a day to work on my books in the beginning. If it started paying off financially, I’d try and increase the effort.
It hasn’t been a perfect system. Some weeks I haven’t done creative work at all and in other weeks, I’ve ignored everything to focus on that one chapter or scene. But on average, I’ve dedicated five to ten hours a week to books, sometimes sleeping later or turning down an invitation to go out in order to get it done. For the rest of my days, I still freelance, I still do content marketing, and I still run The International Freelancer.
Outwardly, not much has changed. Inwardly, I feel like a new person.
Here’s why I think this is important enough to mention: Five months after making this decision and committing to the goal, I am working on books #4 and #5. Books #2 and #3 are now getting covers and edits and being prepared for publication.
These aren’t all new books. One’s an update to an existing book and one is a manuscript I put aside years ago and never returned to.
The point is, I’m getting them done.
I committed. I created a routine, I gave myself an hour each day, and I left all my mental and emotional crap at the door. I shut up the voices in my head. I wrote.
In the end, that’s the only important thing, the only thing you can control. Without you sitting down to write, there is no book, no agent, no sale, no readers. Writing is the core, the part of the process that never ends, that never stops being the most important.
So write.
And if you need a friendly nudge to help you get on track, my book Shut Up and Write: The No-Nonsense, No B.S. Guide to Getting Words on the Page can help.
Your goals are in your hands. Your dreams are within reach.
Make a commitment to yourself today to stop putting off your dreams, and just take one small step towards reaching them. Today. Right now.
Go.