I don’t so much have advice this week as I do have reflection. Coming up on April 8th, I have my first author event. It’s not a huge one, but it’s still more than I’ve ever done before. I’m going to be on a panel at my local library and selling books afterward.
Now, you might think, “But E., you ran a whole dang conference in February.” And you’d be right. But running a conference and being in charge of a thing is very different than being paid to speak at one and attending as just a participant. If I’m in charge, I know everything that’s happening, am responsible for it, and can organize and mitigate it. If I’m hosting something, I find it far less stressful in certain ways than if I’m merely attending.
I know that sounds backwards, but if I’m hosting, that element of control is helpful because, to be honest, I’m really bad at trusting other people to run things effectively. I’ve been on the receiving end of bad leadership too many times to be comfortable. Which isn’t to say the folks running this event aren’t amazing. They’re wonderful folks so far as I can tell, so this isn’t about them.
Also, worse, I can’t hide in administrative tasks. I have to actually interact with human beings. Eek. I guess it will be good practice for going to the 20Books Vegas event, but I won’t be speaking at that. As one might expect, I’m just attending since I am a relative nobody, literarily speaking. I’ve been doing this a while and know a lot, but I only have two books out and am nothing close to a six figure author.
If you live in southern New Hampshire or thereabouts, the event I’m speaking at is the “Derry Authorfest.” It’s a local event featuring authors of various experience levels, which I am entirely here for.
There are times when the imposter syndrome hits pretty hard, though, and this is one of them. For all I’ve been in the industry for a long time (somewhere around 15 years), and I have studied writing, marketing, and publishing intensively, it often feels like I have nothing to show for it because my books aren’t selling like hotcakes (because I’m a new author; that’s not a complaint). I also don’t have a huge editing business largely because of my disability situation. As I’ve said many times, there’s a huge gulf between Medicaid and “can pay for my own healthcare.” In that gap is death for me.
None of that means I don’t know my thing, of course. But it often feels like people could look at my career and kind of shrug.
I hope it goes well. Even if you won’t be there, cross your fingers for me?
