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Day 3: The Strangeness of Life Right Now
Feb. 15th, 2018 03:05 amCase in point: yesterday I received an email from my editor with several pics of hot, shirtless men attached. I saw the pics before reading the email, so it was a pretty wtf moment. And then I read the email and it all made sense: the art department wanted to use a model as reference for the cover, and they wanted me to tell them which looked most like my MC.
Then I had another wtf moment because cover and art department and aaah, this is my life now?
Most days I wake up at 5am and try to get some writing in before I wrangle a baby and a dayjob and try to take care of myself by going for runs and, well, going outside. Some days, I don't see - or talk to - anyone except my family. Some days I don't even make it outside. Punching class has been helping with that and now we take baby to a music class on Saturdays, but my life is very isolated and unglamorous. Our house is smaller than the apartment we had in Tucson.
And then I get emails with shirtless models.
I'm in a weird place even for publishing. I have a two+ year lead to my debut instead of the more typical year. I finally joined a 2019 debut group where everyone is just now signing their contracts, and we will see more people join in the next six months who don't even know it yet. Meanwhile, I'll have all three books turned in before the first even sees the light of day. I have to actively be careful about getting too excited publicly about my books because I don't want to wear people out / bore them.
So on the outside, everything is super chill. I occasionally tell people I'm an author, but without a physical book to back that up, it still feels like bragging (will it ever not feel like bragging?). So mostly I don't talk about it. And then I get blurbs or shirtless men pics and I have to scream internally.
I wrote "eternally" at first and that's not wrong.
But really I have No Chill. Every time I get an email from my editor or agent, I freak out. And then hearing that other authors are reading my book and not hating it? Fuuuuuuuuuck. I honestly keep wondering how I'm going to survive the next year. Lots of internal screaming. Lots of running. Lots of hand flapping and spinning in circles. It's a shot of adrenaline and then my whole day is pretty much wrecked because I'm too excited to do anything. How does anyone handle this?
I'm beginning to better understand impostor syndrome. It's not that I don't feel I'm good enough - I put in the work, gdamnit - but that it's such a huge shift externally. At home, internally, I'm doing the same things I've always done. But now I'm trying to connect with a friend of a friend, and the source friend mentions I might be too intimidating. Wait what? She's never seen me deadlift and seriously I can barely squat half of what I used to - oh. You meant the author thing. Oh. Author, I'm an author - but that doesn't change who I am, who I've been, for the last thirty years.
I'm still here sipping coffee at 6am, watching the baby monitor and willing her to go back to sleep.
Go back to sleep, mama-Kai has words to write.
Then I had another wtf moment because cover and art department and aaah, this is my life now?
Most days I wake up at 5am and try to get some writing in before I wrangle a baby and a dayjob and try to take care of myself by going for runs and, well, going outside. Some days, I don't see - or talk to - anyone except my family. Some days I don't even make it outside. Punching class has been helping with that and now we take baby to a music class on Saturdays, but my life is very isolated and unglamorous. Our house is smaller than the apartment we had in Tucson.
And then I get emails with shirtless models.
I'm in a weird place even for publishing. I have a two+ year lead to my debut instead of the more typical year. I finally joined a 2019 debut group where everyone is just now signing their contracts, and we will see more people join in the next six months who don't even know it yet. Meanwhile, I'll have all three books turned in before the first even sees the light of day. I have to actively be careful about getting too excited publicly about my books because I don't want to wear people out / bore them.
So on the outside, everything is super chill. I occasionally tell people I'm an author, but without a physical book to back that up, it still feels like bragging (will it ever not feel like bragging?). So mostly I don't talk about it. And then I get blurbs or shirtless men pics and I have to scream internally.
I wrote "eternally" at first and that's not wrong.
But really I have No Chill. Every time I get an email from my editor or agent, I freak out. And then hearing that other authors are reading my book and not hating it? Fuuuuuuuuuck. I honestly keep wondering how I'm going to survive the next year. Lots of internal screaming. Lots of running. Lots of hand flapping and spinning in circles. It's a shot of adrenaline and then my whole day is pretty much wrecked because I'm too excited to do anything. How does anyone handle this?
I'm beginning to better understand impostor syndrome. It's not that I don't feel I'm good enough - I put in the work, gdamnit - but that it's such a huge shift externally. At home, internally, I'm doing the same things I've always done. But now I'm trying to connect with a friend of a friend, and the source friend mentions I might be too intimidating. Wait what? She's never seen me deadlift and seriously I can barely squat half of what I used to - oh. You meant the author thing. Oh. Author, I'm an author - but that doesn't change who I am, who I've been, for the last thirty years.
I'm still here sipping coffee at 6am, watching the baby monitor and willing her to go back to sleep.
Go back to sleep, mama-Kai has words to write.
