I’ve lost count of the number of times the only thing I’ve asked Santa for has been for a traditional publisher to offer me a book deal. Well, just before Christmas he finally decided I’d been a good enough girl to deserve one. For 19 years I’ve been learning my craft, doing my apprenticeship, paying my dues — whatever you want to call it — and have been teaching creative writing for the last nine. So you’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d be bouncing off the walls with excitement or whispering those sweet words I told you so to the people on my (very long) list. But I’ve been denied the pleasure of either because since I heard the good news I’ve been wandering around in a state of shell-shock (ironically, one of the themes in my books) with almost all my energy feeding and nurturing the Fear Ogre that has consumed and spat out the carefree person I once was.

SEEKING STABILITY

Somehow it hasn’t helped to remind myself that I had a career before this one in which I was a highly successful senior manager with specialisms in organisation development and facilitation. So I can see the big picture. Undertake strategic planning. Take a holistic approach to change. I’m good with helping people communicate their visions and translate them into achievable goals. Have I forgotten how to do all that? Are my skills too rusty to be honed again? Or is it just the accursed inevitability of it always being easier to tell someone else what to do than to do it yourself? But I was able to recall one of the phrases we bandied about back then . . .

photo taken by Gill Jones: sourced from fotolibra.com

A crocodile has to eat an elephant in biteable bites

And there I was trying to swallow the previously unexplored worlds of marketing strategies, social media, reader platforms, author presence, and blogging all in one go. No wonder I woke up in the night feeling as though I was choking. Comforted by the thought that I would learn everything I needed to as long as I allowed each new concept to be digested and fully absorbed before I shovelled down more on top, I constructed a 6ft high whiteboard out of a pasting table and roll of wallpaper and covered it with mind-maps and flowchart boxes.

FALLING INTO THE ABYSS

And then I panicked. There was too much to do and not enough time to do it in and so I let the ogre take control . . . I set about trying to do all of it all at the same time. Why is it we intellectually know something isn’t the right approach, will be self-defeating, is dissipating our precious energy, and yet we dare not stop because we’ve convinced ourselves that action — any action — is what will make the difference between success and failure? But it isn’t, and it won’t. There is only one thing, one approach, one attitude, that will squash the fear and starve it into submission:

FOCUS
FOCUS
FOCUS

I now recognise that if I can say I’ve achieved that by the end of the day then the rest will come about as a consequence. And I might just have enough of my sanity left to enjoy what the future will bring. I’ll let you know how I get on . . .

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