Raven, I know you wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to offer support that I hope things are better with a little time in the rearview. I'm having similar health issues that have completely blindsided me, and struggling with that urge to use work to block out the big scary (it's not that dire for me, but my brain likes to take molehills and make mountains, put frightening masks on them, and yell boo in my ear until I'm super spooked). So I just wanted to chime in and say I totally get it, and I'm in the "should I/shouldn't I" pendulum swing with you. You've got this, and yes, 2027 is your year, as it will be mine, too. We've both got this! As for this week, it can go fuck itself. I'm gonna chase some writing joy even if it's not the "should be working on," project. "Should" can go fuck itself, too. Solidarity, writing friend.

@Julie Cha oh lord, if the scroll is required now, that’s gonna hurt.

@Ines Johnson will do, thanks!

I love this whole post and comment section. 🥰 In late 2012, right as I was releasing my first full-length e-book and it was taking off, my bff/editor (at the time) and I got talked into moving our self-publishing author support page from a forum board on... I think it was Yahoo? (LOL dating myself) over to Facebook, where groups for this subject were kinda new. There wasn't one yet for our subgenre, so we had a lot of signups and the place was quite active, where people would ask and answer each other's questions about the nitty gritty for uploading books to KDP, how to format an epub vs mobi file from a word doc, how to choose categories, etc. Plus we talked a lot of marketing strategies, launch day stuff, you name it, we all brainstormed it in there. And we were specifically marketing to an audience that wasn't under the wider romance umbrella, so we were honestly breaking new ground with what felt like some pretty innovative stuff. Despite some, uh... strong personalities in there, and near-monthly drama llama dustups on the public side where many of these authors spent their time (and truthfully too, the readers as well, though our strategy group was only the authors and behind-the-scenes support like cover artists, editors, etc), there was very little hotheadedness in our lil corner. We lifted each other up a lot, came up with a ton of new ideas together, and really just kind of vibed through a bunch of "this indie thing is uncharted, let's map our way," things together. It was wild, could be very lucrative (or very not), and was so much fun. I miss that, frankly. The genre in question (m/m romance) exploded a couple of years later, around 2015/16, and that close-knit feeling kind of faded. The marketing, as people from other romance subgenres who'd been in far bigger ponds started writing in our world, got a lot more polished and perfected. We needed to keep up and be much less experimental with what we tried, or we'd be left in others' dust. Then Covid, etc, and the number of authors writing in m/m grew again, and now, one voice getting heard above the chatter is even more difficult.

@Lee Savino No, you did great! Really! (Did you send the email? 😅)

@Lee Savino YESSSS all the signups vibes!!

I got nowhere close to my goal (120k words), and I'll be honest, I knew I wouldn't. It was way too ambitious. I picked that number with the philosophy of shooting for the farthest universe so I'd land in the stars. In that sense, I succeeded, having written more words in October than I did all summer. What's more, I got my momentum back. Genuinely, the real goal was exactly that: my momentum. The number isn't what matters. I'm calling the experiment a success because I recaptured the joy in writing. I am not competition motivated AT ALL, so 10x-ing ANYTHING does me zero good. I look at sales data, or lists of subscribers, or rankings on pages, and I'm just like, "Huh, that's some data, isn't it?" My 34th Clifton Strength, literally the LAST strength on the yardstick, is Competition. I cannot make myself care about beating anyone in a race, any number goal, any kind of deadline. None of it juices me up. Put me at a relationship building retreat? I'm your Huckleberry. I've seen how quick I am to 10x motivation when, say, fundraising for a cause, for example, because that's about community and bettering lives. Tell me I can't do it? Yeah, them's fighting words. My Clifton #1 is Connectedness, and my top 5 are relationship building oriented. What this month taught me is how to translate my strengths into producing a community that motivates me and produces revenue as well. Given how lonely writing is, isolation is the biggest trap for me to lose momentum. So my next goals involve building a subscription model for my readers, so I'm not just talking into the void. Means I need more content first, and that means more writing, so I'm 10x-ing again in November. I did it this month, I'll do it again. 🔥