Tina, our lovely Chihuahua, who suffers from partial blindness, deafness and dementia, is still living the good life as an elderly doggo.
I've always had issues in doing what was required in order to have an appropriate outcome for a particular task/goal I had set for myself. There were a myriad of reasons for allowing this kind of drama in my life. Sometimes, it was the fear of failure. Other times it was the over-analyzing/over-thinking of a particular action that ultimately caused a serious INaction to occur.
Like self-publishing.
The self-doubt/second guessing that I had when it came to self-publishing was, at times, nearly crippling. But I managed to persevere, mostly by taking seriously small baby steps through every step of the process until I was able to, with confidence, press that shiny yellow button that said BUY NOW! that would activate the final step in the process of self-publishing.
Up until now, that was the process that I had followed, without fail, with my previous self-published books: incremental baby steps until my confidence level was at the acme of my existence, which in turn allowed me to press that shiny yellow button that said BUY NOW!
Now is where the issue of procrastination (to be fair, every time I type in that word, this nifty Rod Stewart song immediately comes to mind) has recently come into play.
I had written a Facebook post a few weeks prior to this blog post on how ridiculously easy, compared to my novella from 2024, it was to create (short blurb, long blurb, teaser, title and ideas for a cover) the ephemera needed for my next novella*. I ended up asking the rhetorical question of, "is it really this simple?"
*note: it took me a total of three hours, spread out over three weeks, to complete the aforementioned items.
Well, the answer is, sadly enough, no it is not that simple.
I knew complications were being fast tracked when I began researching what other packages I wanted to purchase this time around for a book cover, which was soon followed by what kind of price increase/new content my formatter of choice had listed on her website. At this point, we decided to super-size our value meal and simply embrace the procrastination that was rapping at my chamber door.
How, you might ask? By choosing to finish a book about the Frankish Empire in the time of Charlamagne and perform another round of pen edits to my five volume fantasy series that I had recently completed earlier this year. At the same time.
I was already beginning to stress out financially over self-publishing my novella, even though my finances were in fantastic shape, so I decided that a distraction was needed to take my mind of things (you see where this is going, right?) by reading the aforementioned book. Then when I was really struggling to finish this book, I had the bright idea to perform yet another round of pen edits, because you know, I needed yet another distraction in order to publish my novella.
And PRESTO!, we pulled a rabbit called "Procrastination" out of the hat. It's not cuddly, nor cute, it smokes a celery stick and it's trying to corner the market on main character syndrome.
Being surrounded by procrastination crutches has done wonders for my well being. I mean, what else can I do but lean on them in my times of uncertainty? Right? If I don't, then that can only mean one thing: I actually have to complete the goal that I had set for myself in early June, which was to publish this novella. And I'm not sure if I want to face that faux fear head on just yet.
So here I sit, with three options in front of me to choose from: A} finish reading the book; B} finish the latest round of pen edits; C} publish that novella. But, is there a fourth option for me to pursue? I mean, if you really think about it, the letter D} would be something like this: do all three at the same time. In other words, perform the catchphrase of Larry the Cable Guy and just "git-r-dun."
Pursuing option D would certainly get me moving in the right direction with my novella, since my novella should take precedence over finishing a book that, in a best case scenario, would be automatically renewed by my local public library. And it should take precedence over finishing my latest round of pen edits, since that book series has at least another eighteen months of gestation before I can actually publish it.
Procrastination is a fugly concept to personally experience, because only means that your confidence level isn't what you thought it was, and that simply isn't true. You need to kick it to the curbside, because if you don't, then you'll be perpetually playing the very tiring game called "What If?", and is that a game you really want to play in today's world of "Do It! Now!"?
Definitely something to think about, and it's something that I too will definitely think about as well.
Is there an option E?
ReplyDeleteOption E is something I don't want to think about just yet.
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