What holds us back from completing our books? I suppose I might ask, "What holds you back from starting your book?" but that's for another day. Yes, I can feel your sense of relief...
Earlier this week, I had a message from Smashwords that My Secret Mother had been accepted into their premium catalog thus making it available in many more formats and places including the Apple store, the Sony store and Barnes and Noble, etc. This was great and gratifying news but there was another piece of news that I knew was coming but had hoped that somehow the book fairy would not notice or would magically fix it. The One Hour Author had not been accepted because it did not have an interactive Table of Contents. Now, if I'm telling the truth, I knew that would happen but hoped for something different.
I had glanced at the technical details of creating a Table of Contents in which the reader could switch from one chapter to any other with ease and move back and forth from text to TOC easily. This is one of the biggest selling features of a digital book or an e-reader but I anticipated a wrestling match with the technology.
This is not a new place for me as I have a love/hate relationship with the tech world and I live in dread of having to learn something new and make mistakes and redo it and on and on - it really tries my patience, something in short supply at the best of times.
Remember the ketchup commercial and the song "Anticipation" by Carly Simon. I feel a bit like the ketchup as I slowly make my way to the opening between me and technology. Anyway, the anticipation is far worse than the actual work itself. I set aside some time to get it started, followed the instructions that are detailed in the Smashwords publishing manual (it's free at their website) and started the dreaded process of formatting the book properly. It took about an hour, which includes the mistakes I made along the way.
Now, why didn't I just do that in the first place, you ask? I don't know - maybe I just anticipate this monumental struggle and want to avoid it. That doesn't work because eventually I have to deal with it anyway and the funny thing is, it's usually a much easier solution that I thought it would be.
My question to you is, where in your book writing process are you "anticipating" problems and avoiding solving them as you hope the book fairy will save you, too?
Go ahead and take a stab at it today - it may be easier than you "anticipated."
Please forward my blog to friends who might benefit - see you soon.
Hi Bob,
ReplyDeleteI just messaged you on Twitter about finishing your excellent book, "My Secret Mother." I got it for research for a book I have just begun to work on dealing with adoption and birth mothers.
I must have started following you on Twitter because of your self-publishing posts. I have a memoir that I just received a proof copy for from Createspace and hope to upload as an e-book as well.
It's good to know you.
My twitter name is cmsmith57; my author Facebook page is Christine M Grote; and my blog is http://www.randomthoughtsfrommidlife.wordpress.com where I post about my self-publishing journey, Alzheimer's, gardening, and whatever else I happen to think of.