My debut novel comes out today.
Technically, I’m writing this the day before, so I still have approximately 18 hours or so before my book Such A Bad Influence is really out there in the world. But for all intents and purposes, the fact remains: We made it! As of tomorrow, there will be no more begging people to pre-order and explaining why it’s important. No more counting down the days. No more thinking of my year in terms of June 4: After June 4, I can relax. After June 4, I can think about something else. After June 4, I can take a deep breath.
I guess this last part is maybe why I keep having to remind myself that this isn’t really the end of something at all but rather the beginning of a new part of the process. And though I do very much currently have the instinct to delete my social media and lock myself in a silent, dark room for a week solid, that’s not really an option. And in fact, after so many months of self-promotion in my own little bubble, I’m very excited for this new phase of things, where other people have read the book and we can talk about it — in person, even!! (Current tour dates at bottom of this post! Please come hang out with me!!!). I still can’t quite wrap my head around that one. There’s a lot in this process I can’t quite wrap my head around, really. It’s so brand new and precious I sometimes feel frozen in the middle of it, determined to get it all right, to remember. I am terrified to waste it or take it for granted or mess it up in such a way that it means I can never do it again. I am so grateful for all of you and everyone who’s supported me along the way that I keep having the urge to gather up all the well wishes and pre-orders and kindness and toss it back into the murky world. Everyone deserves to feel this.
I took the past two weeks off of my regular Substack posts to focus on catching my breath before pub day, a choice I had some guilt about initially as it meant there would be at least two fewer opportunities to promote the book and share a pre-order link (like I said, Self-Promotion Brain is weird). But as I write this, I’m very confident it was the right choice. Today, I feel about as sharp and insightful as a pancake. I’m overwhelmed and exhausted and distracted, and though it’s in all the best ways, I don’t know that I could string together a series of sentences that could accurately sum up this feeling. But maybe I can explain the gratitude. That part, I’m finding, is crystal clear.
I knew going into this process that it would be very easy for me to get momentarily lost within the handful of calculable, concrete statistics in publishing. Sales. Comments. Likes. Follows. Money. Reviews. Stars. Rankings. Book clubs and press blurbs and celebrity endorsements and on and on it goes. It’s easy to pick one and use it to predict your book’s success or doom, your career’s success or doom. I knew this because it’s easy for me to do the same in any other aspect of my life. Maybe it’s this way for most of us, in anything, the question itching at us as we look at our peers or scroll on our phones: Am I OK? Am I OK? Am I OK? I knew this would happen when it came to the book, too, so I committed myself to responding to the question with gratitude. It was the only concrete goal I set for myself in the publishing process. Gratitude over comparison. I knew if I stuck to that, I’d always be OK. And though I’ve gotten lost in the comparison and the panic, and I’ve found myself clinging to small details, obsessing over them, the truth is that I’ve (shockingly) felt steady throughout most of this process. Good. Happy.
A year ago, imagining all there was to come (cover reveal! ARCs! first reviews!), I was fairly confident I wouldn’t be able to resist the things I knew I should — reading reviews, comparing my book to others, second-guessing words/sentences/everything. But I haven’t done any of that, at least not in any substantial, impactful way. I quite literally forced myself and my brain to reroute fleeting moments of insecurity and comparison to gratitude, again and again and again. It’s what carried me along and kept me afloat. It’s perhaps the greatest professional lesson of my life. I feel almost as grateful for it (gratitude for gratitude is a little much, yes, but listen — it’s the truth!) as I do for all of you. I sometimes feel so thankful for the ability to write and to make sense of my most complicated feelings and thoughts in this way that I forget how utterly unbelievable it is that I get to write and I also get to know that there are people out there reading my words. You! You’re here! You’re part of the reason I was able to publish a book, and part of the reason why I am living a dream so big I never really allowed myself to dream it before now. So I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you love reading the book as much as I loved writing it.
Olivia
My copy was delivered at 7:30am today! I'm already 2 chapters in! (sorry, job.)
Congratulations ! SABI was such a great debut, I hope you really *know* that. And please please please come to DC! Anything I can do to make that happen, including being an usher at your event at Solid State, I’m happy to do it! 😉