I am not so good with New Year
resolutions. I usually don’t make any and then there is nothing to break. *grins*
But I am trying to get a handle on my own self-doubt, or the anxiety troll that
lives inside my head and tells me I'm rubbish. I really want to get some major
works out this year.
I have followed an artist, Melissa
Dinwiddie, who aims to help all creative types. One of her ideas was to look at
why you have this troll and what it
is aiming to do. She suggested writing a letter to it from an outside
perspective. Sounds odd, I know, but what I realised when I was doing this, is that
my anxiety troll is just worried about me.
It is so worried about me that it is trying to stop me sticking my head out in
case I get kicked … again.
My troll is Marvin, Nemo’s father, who never wanted anything to happen
to his son.
Imagine, for a second, a life where
nothing happens to you?
Ugh… boring, eh?
This morning I read a blog post
from Chuck Wendig. ARTING HARD LIKE AN ARTFUL MOTHERF***ER: 25 WAYS TO BE A
BAD-ASS MAKER WHO MAKES BAD-ASS STUFF. Chuck shouts… a lot. He tags his blog as
NSFL= not safe for life…
Rule 1 of this manifesto was:
Repeat After Me: “F*** It, I’m Doing It Anyway”
Huh… okay.
Rule 2 was: learn to care less.
It makes sense; I know it makes sense. Chuck also suggests
not getting so upset about bad reviews; look at what they are actually saying.
I also followed another writer and
authorprenuer this month, Nick Stephenson. I had seen him on a couple of
podcasts and video interviews. He has great advice about selling books and
marketing.
All these people want to help
writers and creatives, and they all give things away. Melissa makes her art shareable,
Nick’s first book is perma-free on Amazon and he will give you the second book if
you sign up on his website, and Chuck gives great advice all the time. I
recently bought a bundle of all seven of his writing advice ebooks directly
from him for a small amount of money.
Watching one of Nick’s videos, I was
on the Kobo page following what he was doing. And when the video had finished I
remembered that some of my short stories are on Kobo through the Smashwords
site. I hadn't looked them up in ages.
Alejandro & Maela has 11 reviews. It averages four stars.
I sat there and I blinked and then
I took a deep breath and read some of the lower rated reviews. And they all
pretty much mark it down, not because they hate it, or it was badly produced,
but because there wasn’t enough of it.
Yes, people marked down my short
story because it was… well… short. So to follow chuck’s advice, my negative reviews
are saying that they wanted more.
Huh.
Links:
Terrible minds
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