I finished my draft audio recordings for all three books and then hit a block, or fell down a hole of paralysed inactivity. Not literally paralysed, but somehow unable to keep working on the books.
I really needed to move quickly onto the next phase: the final edit, with headset on, listening, reading, editing. I scheduled it, set alarms, looked over to my work corner quite longingly sometimes, but for ten whole days I didn’t open my laptop. Felt unable to open my laptop.
Why? I don’t know, exactly. Possibly because the books are quite close to being published, now. Shit gets real. Publishing feels like exposure, like standing naked on top of a plinth in a busy city centre, yelling “Look at me!!!” and “Please criticise my best work and go ahead, tell me you hate it. Or – worse – don’t read it at all.”
I don’t even know if it’s my best work. Some of it is, undoubtedly. It’s a story, anyway. It’s got a beginning, a middle and an end. Each book has this and the trilogy as a whole has it too. People like stories. Somebody might like this, and that’s enough.
Anyway, today, I’m actually working again. I had to find another chair, because the cat is sleeping on my usual one and of course, she can’t be moved. When I noticed that obstacle, I nearly didn’t carry on. A great excuse, not to.
But “No,” I thought. “Come on. Get another chair and put it next to the cat’s my usual one.”
And I did. And I final-edited a whole chapter. And here I am.
Oh, in the hiatus, I realised I was imbuing this book with potential life-saving and life-wrecking powers. If it sells, we’ll have new windows in this draughty old house, I was telling myself. If it doesn’t, I am a failure.
Hmmm. Interesting.
In actual fact, it doesn’t have any of those powers.
It’s just a book.