It occurred to me the other day that I'm approaching the six year anniversary of this blog.
The impending blog-a-versary gives me a twinge of guilt not unlike an uninvited nipple tweak from a stranger with chilly hands.
When I started this blog in Febraury 2010, I somehow managed to post every single day. Not only that, but I replied to everyone who took time to comment (sometimes 50-100 commenters per entry), plus I wrote weekly content for several other blogs and still found time to write the books that necessitated the blog in the first place.
These days I'm lucky to post here twice a month.
Frankly, I could spend hours beating myself up for things I used to be able to do and can no longer accomplish. Don't get me started on putting my ankles behind my head.
But then I remember I don't have hours to spend on self-flagellation these days, which is unfortunate since flagellating myself is one of my favorite pastimes. Or maybe I'm confusing flagellation with another verb.
In any case, a lot has changed in my life since I started this blog. Back then, I had a brand new three-book deal for my first romantic comedies, but the first one wasn't slated to hit shelves for another 18 months. Making Waves (the aforementioned debut novel) was already written, as was my second contracted book, Believe it or Not, which meant I had a long, leisurely time to write the third book in the contract.
That's a far cry from today's schedule, which has me contracted to publish five books in the next 12 months with two different publishers. (Incidentally, two of those are up for pre-order already. The Fix Up comes out December 2015, and Let it Breathe comes out March 2016. The other three are...um, not exactly written. Or plotted. Or brainstormed. Or....hell, here we go again with the self-flagellation).
Besides the changes in my writing and publishing schedule, I've seen a helluva lot of change in my personal life since the start of this blog. Back then, I thought things were hunky dory with my marriage of 13 years, but I had no idea I was on the precipice of a divorce that would consume every ounce of my time, energy, and soul for more than a year.
Things are much happier these days, and my remarriage to an amazing guy last September gave me the added bonus of two incredible stepkids. Of course, life with young kids (even on a part-time basis) goes hand-in-hand with family dinners and soccer games and cross country meets and parent/teacher conferences and pumpkin carving and a million other activities which -- while joyful -- are time commitments I didn't have six years ago.
I don't mean for any of this to sound like a list of excuses for why I'm not blogging every day anymore. On the contrary, it's a reminder to myself of why it's okay to cut myself a little slack every now and then and accept the fact that my life, my career, and my schedule are always evolving. If my existence weren't a constant string of changes, that would be cause for alarm (though admittedly I could do with a bit less change when it comes to gravity's effect on the contents of my bra).
Are you as prone to self-flagellation as I am? What are your tricks for learning to cut yourself some slack? Please share in the comments!
Oh, and even though I've slipped to posting here only a couple times a month, I do have some new avenues for staying in touch with readers and friends. Just last week, I launched a new author Facebook page (and yes, I acknowledge the irony of having a day job that's 80% Facebook content creation and strategy, yet it took me five years to start an author Facebook page).
Anyway, if you go here and like me, I promise you'll get the inside scoop on new releases, giveaways, contests, random pet photos, inappropriate jokes, and more.
Also, I'm getting ready to launch a new author newsletter. That will be chock full of exclusive content like excerpts, behind-the-scenes details from my books, and oodles of giveaways. You can sign up for that here (and I promise not to spam you. Honest.)
Now back to the issue of self-flagellation! Do you use your right or your left hand for that?
Sunday, November 1, 2015
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3 comments :
Tawna, I was right in the middle of beating myself up for not posting anything on my own blog when I saw that you had updated about the very same topic! (You have way more reasons to be busy than I do. Watching 3 episodes of Supernatural in a row probably isn't *that* important huh?) To be honest though, I'd much rather see your books on the shelf than a brand new post here every day! Keep doing what you're doing, hon, because it is *clearly* working for you. ;)
OMG, so much this. I wish I had some kind of handy dandy trick for instituting a reality check, but I'm really not great at that part. I have to remind myself that I'm still working a full time and part time job in addition to the writing. That I'm cranking out 3x the words now in fiction than I was when I started blogging. That it's important that I take the time for things like cooking healthy meals and getting off my patoot to actually exercise (endorphins are my favorite!). When I do that, it's like--oh, I actually do a lot of stuff.
I read an article yesterday talking about why Gen Yers are unhappy, which, while I didn't wholly agree with it, did have one salient point: We are constantly surrounded and bombarded by success on places like Facebook or Twitter. The people who are most successful are most likely to post about it (whereas the people who are less successful are more likely to stay quiet for fear of sounding like a bellyaching twit). So we have this completely unrealistic setup wherein everybody else's grass looks like freaking TECHNICOLOR compared to our own because we aren't seeing the true comparison cases.
So anyway, don't beat yourself up and know that we'd all rather you be putting your energies into more books. <3
Writers are great at beating themselves up. I do it all the time. I've had to be very selective about the things I do. I've had a lot of personal changes in my life and have had to let some things go. It'll be okay!
PS, it took me about 3 years to start an author FB page, and I've really slipped on keeping it updated lately. *sigh*
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