Two Wrongs That Make A Spite

I recently spent an episode of my Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing podcast reflecting on two of the negative things that writers unnecessarily inflict upon themselves. The episode is entitled "Two Wrongs That Make A Writer Spite."

The two things are COMPARISON and REJECTION.

 

These two seemingly little things can eat up a significant amount of a writer's time and convince them that the good fight of continuing to write and publish might not be worth it.

It's not fair to compare yourself to others; there will be times when the comparison makes you feel less worthy and other times where it'll fill you with a false sense of grandeur. Either way is not a good thing. The only thing you should be comparing yourself to is YOU yesterday.

Also, I pause to think about how a writer friend (Kerrie in Episode 31 of the same podcast) doesn't like to use the word REJECTION when talking about writing. Drawing inspiration from Kerrie's thoughts on that, I reflect on what "rejection" most likely actually means.

You can listen to me ponder these two things in full frontal audio here:

Podcast: Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Episode 1: New Year, New Reflections

I have launched a new podcast and am copying the show-notes from the main website for this (Stark Reflections) below....


Welcome to the first episode of the Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing Podcast.

If you have questions or topics you’d love me to cover, please feel free to comment or email me at mark@markleslie.ca or reach out to me on Twitter @MarkLeslie.

The start of a new year is always a time for reflection. It’s often a look back at the previous year and the goals accomplished during that period. And it usually also involves setting some goals or targets for the year ahead.

I have continued to do that each year. But if you’re like me, then perhaps you also fall prey to one of those other pesky little side effects of that can come when reflecting on your goals – you end up focusing ONLY on the things that you didn’t get to strike off your annual writing “to do” list.

We tend to always do that to ourselves. For example, I didn’t achieve three of the writing goals I had laid out in 2017. Let’s walk through all three so I can illustrate how I manage to make the most out of goals NOT fully achieved.

Those three goals were:

1. Creating and launching a short story collection
2. Writing the sequel to A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK (entitled FEAR AND LONGING IN LOS ANGELES)
3. Publishing the audiobook version of A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK

I didn’t get any of those three things done.

And I could focus on that – OR, I could applaud myself for coming close in achieving each of those tasks, or the work that I have been able to do on them. I walk through each of those and outline what I DID achieve in relation to those goals, demonstrating that while I didn’t hit my targets, I did end up further ahead in each one than when I started off the year.

I also share some information about how my audiobooks sold in 2017, including some unexpected income sources for those audiobooks.

Two main things that I try to illustrate in going through these examples are:

• You don’t always fully achieve the goals you set out to, but sometimes you make progress, which is good; and other times you end up achieving other things in parallel that you didn’t originally plan. DON’T LOSE SIGHT of those achievements in the process of beating yourself up about the things you didn’t hit.
• I shared my modest earnings because one of the things that frustrates me to no end is the fact that it seems only the authors earning 6 and 7 figure incomes are publicly sharing their earnings, leading to a significant amount of comparisonitis which can be a truly demoralizing experience.

I also discuss several intriguing collaborative elements of publishing that I have been following, and call out a few specific elements I have been following (Authors on a Train, BundleRabbit, and One More Story Games alog with my belief that there will be even more great collaboration opportunities on the horizon for writers.

Links of Interest:

• The Writing Show – Getting Published with Mark Leslie
• Public Lending Rights Program (Canada)
• Authors on a Train – J. Thorn & Zach Bohannon
• Bundlerabbit.com
• One More Story Games
• Findaway Voices
• ListenUp IndiePub
• Mark Leslie’s Author Website

The music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

RSS options for this podcast:  Mark Leslie at Libsyn or Feedburner