#creativenervoussystem

There's a lot going on in the world right now. There's the nonstop political shenanigans that give shenanigans a bad name, because those are supposed to be fun, right? There's exploding diarrhea because who doesn't want that in the heat of summer. And did I mention the heat? It's been brutal; it zaps your energy, and it can make you sick and send your chronic illness into a flare. (Let me wave to all my flare friends.)

I'm hearing a couple of big refrains throughout all the writing communities I'm in. Everyone's sales are down across the board (and I'm hearing this outside of the book world, too). Everyone is feeling like they've been stuck in a pressure cooker for way too damn long. And no one wants to feel that way.

If that sounds familiar, let me start off this post by telling you that you're not alone. Not by a long shot.

Everything that's happening plus the belief that you need to keep writing, keep creating, and keep producing can be overwhelming. In fact, there's no can be. It is overwhelming, and it can be the cause of writer's block.

Which is real, by the way. And I'll be talking about that more.

I wish I had kind words and assurances that everything would be all right and we'll all get through this unscathed. I also don't want to lie to anyone. So today, all I want to say is that it's okay not to be okay.

It's important for our creative nervous systems that we don't put additional pressure on ourselves to be okay. I know there's a belief that we have to always be "on" and there are "gurus" telling you that you need to release multiple chapters a week on your subscription or write/dictate 5000 words a day. They can tell you that, but it's also very curious that many of them are pivoting to "author work-life balance" and "sustainable career" rather than admit that what they were selling was a house of cards.

Allow yourself to not be okay.

Allow yourself to breathe and take breaks.

And admit to yourself that things aren't okay and you can't pretend that they are.

It's okay to not be okay. And it's okay to admit you're not okay. And if you haven't gotten the gist of this blog yet, well, whatever you're dealing with, whatever you're going through, and however you're dealing with it, you're doing okay. After all, we're all human and no one was meant to maxx everything in our current times.

One of the hardest parts of being an author is putting together a story that you are certain is amazing, offering it to the world and...nothing. Books that you expect to be flops may be successes, which isn't a bad thing at all. But the reverse, those books you think will be stars that end up being meh in the sales department, that hurts and makes this business much more difficult than it needs to be. The truth is, as an author, you can do everything right and still have things not turn out as planned. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the changes that happen in our business. Computer glitches. Policy changes. There's a lot that's happening right now If you don't deal with the unknown, the uncertainty that what you do may not yield results, then your creativity and your desire to write can be stopped in its tracks. Somehow, you need to balance the fact that there are some things you can't control and make sure you're making the most of what you can control. Working with an understanding your creative nervous system allows you to deal with the publishing unknown. It may seem like pop psychology to advise someone to know what they can control and to let go of the rest. But it's also really good advice, and in this era of amplified unknowns, I encourage authors to be the students of their own creativity and writing processes.

What can we, as authors, control?

On one hand, I'd like to be glib and say not a lot. But, we control the writing of the stories, and though there may be market considerations, for the most part we control the content, the length, and the way in which we write it (for example at a desk in an office, on a phone or through dictation, etc.). If we self-publish, then we also control where the book is distributed, the price point, who we use for cover art and to some extent how they create the cover, the blurb and marketing materials. If we work with a publisher, we might have some say into the cover art and we will still have to market. The blurb may not quite be under our control, and of course we have to work with editors, but there's still quite a bit about the actual book production we control.

What do we do with this control?