Finding your voice after the publishing panic

So there's something I've heard before about getting published. It's that, once you get your first book deal (or second or third, I don't know how long it goes on, maybe forever for some people and maybe it never happens to others), there's a panic. There's a pressure. Suddenly, somebody wants something you wrote, and now they will want more-- and so you have to write more. And you have to write more better and faster. And you stare at the document full of a dozen story ideas you've had over the last few years, and you panic.

None of them are good enough. You are not good enough. You can't do this. People expect you to, there's a timeline, a deadline, and you have to deliver, and you don't know if you can. What if people hate your first book? Worse, what if people hate your second book, which means your first was just a fluke, which means you're a hack and you should just hide because you're writing that first draft of that second book right now and you already know it sucks and it's taking too long and you don't want anyone to read it, anyway.

It's kind of paralyzing. You spend a lot of time second-guessing yourself. You analyze everything you write to make sure it's done "the right way." You want to be original, but not too out there, and you don't know if you're doing that, or if you're doing anything right at all. Because the thing is, getting a book deal didn't suddenly make you a better writer than you were before. You've written a book before, but you've never written this book before, and it's hard as hell.

It all comes down to this: now that you have an audience, you stop listening to yourself.

But hopefully, you get to the point where you realize you've stopped listening. Maybe it takes you a week or a month or a year, but once you realize you've stopped listening, it's actually pretty easy to start again. You turn off Twitter with its helpful but overwhelming tweets on how to write EVERYTHING. You turn off Facebook with its wonderful friends who can't wait to read your book. You'll turn them back on again, because you love those things and those people. You appreciate them, and you need them. But not right now.

Right now, you need silence and you need a blank page. You need to look at that new story and find yourself inside it. That's the story you were missing-- the one that belongs to you, not to the people you think you have to impress in the future. This is what agents and editors mean when they tell you to write what you love, not to the trends. Let the story be what it will be, and let it be yours.

Shut the door. Forget the world. And write the book.