Here’s a secret I bet none of you know: having a little exposure can lead to a lack of confidence.
“Excuse me?” I hear you saying it right now. “But you’re having SUCCESS in your exposure. People like your book–or they seem to, anyway. It should give you MORE confidence.”
Call me backward. For me, success/exposure is more than slightly scary, because of the follow-up: what if I can’t follow up? What if I suck? What if the next book sucks? What if everyone’s lying about liking my book? What if I’m ugly and fat? What if nobody comes to my book signing? What if . . . what if . . . what if . . . ?? You get the point (my husband, if he was reading this blog, would be ROLLING HIS EYES AND SIGHING LOUDLY).
Then, the inestimably smart, amazing, career-changing agent Janet Reid (can you tell I appreciate her?) posted a link to Toni McGee Causey’s post about confidence on the Murderati blog. And the bell went off in my head–ding ding ding ding ding!!
See if that happens for you, too. What if I decided, every single day, to ignore those “what-ifs”?
So here’s to making choices–and here’s to the amazing, beautiful, funkadelic space that is the writing community on the WWW! Writers, editors, agents, publishers, marketers–we are lucky, lucky people to have such a crowd to talk with and learn from.