Encouragement

I read an article today on the Indie romance ink loop (and for anyone even remotely considering self pubbing, I'd highly recommend joining, invaluable info there) that touched on the subject of when is your book ready to publish and WOW, it hit all my weak spots. I've got a high, high fear of failure, I can literally be up one day, down the next and I also suffer with completely unrealistic expectations. I can have a book that's been sent to 6 betas, only 1 comes back negative... the beta has ripped it apart, told me it stinks and basically needs a total rewrite... but yet everyone else is in love, (or in like..lol).. but it's that one negative that makes me sick and unable to move forward. Why? Because I want everyone to love it and the fact that not everyone does irritates me. Unrealistic, we can't please them all. In fact, some of my favorite authors in the world (IE: P.C. Cast) has written some HUGE stinkers, in my mind. There's one book in particular that I seriously wanted to give a 1 star rating on amazon, but where I hated it... I saw others praising it as one of her best works. The article spoke of Shakespeare in particular and how millions of fans think he's the best writer that ever was, but there's still thousands of detractors. And that's true and I have to be okay with that, I need to be able to let it go and say... this is my book. Maybe if you'd written you would have done it differently, clearly... but this is how I did it and 5 out of 6 likes ain't bad.

So... after reading that I felt immediately better about self publishing and realizing I will get 1 stars, heck... my book might only rank 3 stars overall... but I CAN'T make it better, because that is my plot. The way I figure it, if my writing is as strong as it can be and the plot makes sense I'm just gonna have to be okay with certain readers disliking certain books. Happens to the best of them.

I'm so not a Nora fan... obviously I'm in the very very minority... something for me to think about and remember and I know I'll be okay.