Eating an Elephant

Saturday morning, I was reading an article over at the Mad Genius Club blog wherein the author was discussing re-evaluating what he's doing, and in such, going over whether this writing thing is a business, a hobby, or just a pastime.  (It's a good article.  Go read it.  I'll wait.)


I had hoped reading the article would light a fire under my ass, but in reality, all it did was depress me.  Especially when I read about all the things he's currently working on.

What am I working on?  I have the notebook full of edit notes sitting on the stool next to my desk, where it's been sitting for the past few weeks.  And every time I look at it, I feel guilty and depressed about it, but I can't make myself pick the damn thing up and get to work. 

I got this awesome idea the other day for a new book.  Can't seem to work on that either. 

And I probably should be writing Cinder Ugly.  Or the fourth SCIU book.  Or the third Dennis Haggarty book.  Umm...

Then there's the point in the article where he talks about 1000 super fans.  I guess it's a thing.  I have two super fans.  :waves at them:  And he talks about how we should be connecting with them.  Umm... Hi.  I can't even bring myself to invite people to like my pages on Facebook.  Cuz, like I don't want to bother anyone.  Connecting with people other than hoping they find me here or there is really hard.  Like run away and hide hard.

When I was in sales, it was way easier.  You need a widget, I have a widget.  I make an appointment to talk to you about using my widget instead of the dozen other widgets out there.  You buy my widget because it's the best widget at the best price with the best lead time.  Or you don't.  And I move on to the next company that needs widgets. 

Translating that into book sales?  Not so much.  Oh, I still have awesome widgets at competitive pricing.  But everybody's got a widget to sell and trying to get my widget in front of buyers... Yeah, I've already gone over that before.  Or to borrow a line from an Andy Grammer song "I'm supposed to cut through all this noise with my little voice."

Everything feels so overwhelming right now.  Maybe I should look at it like eating an elephant.  You know how you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.