anticlimactic

I was thinking today that it’s funny how sometimes I pay people to tell me things I already know.

I buy books, go to classes, and engage in other learning on a variety of topics that sometimes I might know well enough to teach.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t need that book/class/other learning. It just means sometimes I need someone to tell me things I already know.

Maybe I need reminding.

Maybe I want to see if there’s a gold nugget in there for me to latch onto.

Or maybe it’s simply a soothing mechanism. (I’m doing okay. I’m not alone. What I’m experiencing or feeling is normal. Everyone goes through this. Keep going.)

In that spirit, I bought a book this week on author mindset. I could tell from the table of contents that I likely knew what she was going to say. I probably could have written it.

I still wanted to hear it. I needed to be reminded, I was looking for gold nuggets, and I needed to be soothed.

And yes, for the most part, it didn’t break new ground for me.

It was soothing, anyway.

The part that was most soothing for me this week was to hear that for other authors—not just me—actually publishing a book is an anticlimax.

Yes, there’s a thrill in seeing the story you created. But beyond that, the book comes out and … 

I have to wait for people to buy it.

And read it.

And then perhaps tell me in a review or somewhere else that they did read it.

There’s no loud cannon at midnight on the day a book comes out, even though I wish there would be.

With my next book, I can’t even refresh an author dashboard since I’m not the publisher.

Hmm. Feels like just about any other moment.

So, I think that simply acknowledging that it’s an anticlimax for people other than me is worth knowing.

And I also like her suggestion of what to do: work on the next book.

(I already am. I may be done with a first draft by release day … or close to it. And I’m really happy with it.)

Here’s to people telling us what we already know. Thank you for the sympathy and reminders.