In line with my previous blog, there are many ways writers can trick themselves into failure. These mental games are easily the worst thing about the business and tend to encroach on every step of the process. When you’re dealing with selling a product in a marketplace that is completely dependent on consumer reviews and opinions, terrifying and debilitating worries are part of the game.
The goal is to trick yourself out of the slow spiral to failure and straight into success.
It’s not easy. Not at all.
If it was, everyone would do it, right?
My wife thinks I hate my job. She worries I’m super depressed all the time and should be on the highest dose of some mind-altering fuel to get me back to my huggable, loveable self. None of what I’m feeling has to do with my writing. Mental games don’t play into matters until the book is done. Until you start what comes next.
I suffer through this quite a bit. The extreme highs of finishing a book, coupled with the idea that no one will ever read it. Or worse, that no one will like the damn thing.
When I send stuff out for people to read, I am usually shaking. Anxiety is no surprise for the introvert, but outright fear of the opinions of others is taking it to a whole new level.
So how do you overcome this fear? How do you beat the mental games?
Part of the solution comes from ignoring the noise. I used to check my reviews religiously. It drove a large pit into my stomach, but I felt it was a necessary component of the business. I don’t do that anymore. What happens with my books happens, and if someone doesn’t like them I can only hope others will.
Ignoring the noise frees up space for the joy of creating. That’s the bottom line, and the key to any success in this business and in life, in general.
Setting realistic expectations. I went through this recently with some alpha readers on DSA. I love feedback and want to hear about the books and what works and what doesn’t. But some tact doesn’t hurt. Understanding how an author has spent months of their lives crafting their tale and doesn’t want the first thing they hear to be a complaint, or an outright shredding of their entire project, goes a long way toward soothing their fragile ego.
In a recent email to friends and family, I mentioned how a compliment would be nice before the review process began. Whether or not they listen is up to them…
Change your outlook. No, not your actual email address, though wouldn’t that be nice? Instead, view yourself as a role you are playing rather than someone with connections and a life. I think one of my problems of the last few years has been myself. I write these blogs, emails, and books knowing family might (I stress that, might) read them and so I tweak things for their benefit. Their reaction started to matter more than the actual work.
That’s not why I do this. It shouldn’t be why any of us write what we love and share what we feel. So, I had to change. I had to face where I stumbled because of these outside influences, and figure out why they impact me the way they do.
On one hand, I considered putting everything under a pen name. Really treating my life as a character in a story. That seemed more avoidance than anything.
Beating my own mental games
To beat my own mental game, I decided simply to focus on my readers and not those closest to me. They will always be there, and they will always carry their own opinion over the value of my writing. Some will read the books and love them. Others will promise to read them in the future and never will. Still others won’t even pretend to care. And that’s fine.
They are not who I am writing for, and that is how I beat the mental games that weigh me down. Or try to, at any rate. I’ve thought about deleting this blog completely rather than let people read it. That’s the old fear coming back. So I’m just going to let it ride and see how things go…
