My next book, Sweeter Than Revenge, comes out next month.
This, as you probably know if you’ve spent any time hanging around this blog, means I’m spending lots of time:
1. Not sleeping;
2. Worrying about the book’s potential success or lack thereof; and
3. Generally feeling nauseous.
So when I ran across Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life the other night, I snatched it right up. I have heard other writers recommend this book many times, both for its humor and insight, and I figured that’s what I needed. I had high hopes that Lamott would reassure me that I’m not insane for being this nervous about a book when there are so many other things to be anxious about like, say, the war, global warming, and my children’s latest shenanigans.
I was, therefore, thrilled when I came across this sentence in the Introduction:
I believed, before I sold my first book, that publication would be instantly and automatically gratifying, an affirming and romantic experience, a Hallmark commercial where one runs and leaps in slow motion across a meadow filled with wildflowers into the arms of acclaim and self-esteem.
Whoa, I thought. This woman gets me. I can’t wait to see what else she has to say.
So I will be spending this rainy Sunday in Cincinnati reading Bird by Bird and trying to reassure myself about the whole book thing.
And, all you writers out there, if you don’t have this book, you should go to Amazon right now and order it.
Okay, okay. You’re the third person who’s recommended this book to me. I guess it’s time to buy it!
Thanks. I need all the help and encouragement I can get …
by Chicki Brown December 3rd, 2007 at 7:09 amChicki, I knew I’d get a witness on the whole writer’s angst thing. We’re kind of a pitiful bunch when you think about it.
by ann December 3rd, 2007 at 10:18 amYes you guys are
Really… just the FACT you finished a book. Just one book, is so much more than many people who want to write will do.
To finish one and SELL it is such a success in and of itself. If you are happy with the final product, it is a winner. Says she who doesn’t write, doesn’t wanna write and would be a neurotic mess if she were in your shoes
Hope the book was helpful.
by Sybil December 15th, 2007 at 10:29 amAHA! So even though you don’t want to write, you do ADMIT that writing would make you neurotic! See? Writing makes people neurotic!
Or is it that neurotic people write?
by ann December 15th, 2007 at 2:45 pmOh totally… I would know it shouldn’t but it would. Something like a job evaluation you really have no control over from 10000’s of people.
errr… I am not helping am I?
I don’t wanna write and am a touch
neurotic sooo guess that kills that idea.
by Sybil December 16th, 2007 at 9:37 pmNo. Not helping. But I still like having you around.
by ann December 17th, 2007 at 9:18 am