Page 10 - New Book. Who This?

(Music fades in)

Oh hi! I’m MJ Bailey, and I write things. Sometimes. It doesn’t mean I always know what to write, but hey, we’ll get there. I guess.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

And yeah, I have a new book out. New-ish because this episode took a lot longer than I thought it would. I also have another one that feels like it’s about to come out if I just push through it. But that’s always my mindset with a release. Push through. And in doing so, I get tunnel vision and have to ignore any number of other things in my life. Hence the silence on this feed. And while it’s not the only reason that Aishi Online has seen so many delays, it’s not irrelevant to the conversation. But I do mean to make an episode that discusses that more in depth, so just put a pin in it for now. 

In any event, the new book is done. Life can resume some small degree of normalcy until I feel the need to buckle down on the next one. But ideally that is going to be sometime soon.

And I’m not saying that specifically so I can have more books to sell. It’s more of the sense that I am craving that rush of having done something, that release from entirely self-imposed chains. But there’s a moment, right when I upload that final document, that I feel like I’m actually a writer. And then I have to fight with the platform to get the cover formatted right and submitted because I swear they change the requirements on me every, single, time, but that’s neither here nor there. 

Because it’s not the cover issue that makes me feel like an imposter. It’s me. Somehow. I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t pay attention when my therapist is talking because it means I don’t have to face the truth of whatever she is saying. But I can admit that imposter syndrome isn’t particularly fun. Which goes without saying, really. It’s like you are being pushed out of your life because you allegedly don’t fit into it. And your brain is fixated on the smallest points of incompatibility. The intensity without break is more than enough to drive you mad. Or it’s had that effect on me. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

And–unsurprisingly–it can be really hard to silence that voice of doubt, though. When you don’t, it gets louder, more emboldened. Which makes it harder to fight later. But even knowing that doesn’t make you inclined to fight back because what if it is right? What if you really aren’t as good as you think you are or want to be?

If so, you would want to know, right? You’d want to be able to take the time to get better. You would want to know to not over commit or brag, lest you get immediately humbled by the tasks you can’t handle. At the very least, it will give you a chance to build up some of your defenses or cover stories. You have options. Consequently, it can be tempting to think of that imposter syndrome feeling as a genuine hunch, a warning of what is to come. Its lines are spoken perfectly. Its timbre and texture are just so sweet and smooth that you cannot even begin to question it. 

So you believe it. You trust it. And now it has its claws into you. And getting yourself free is a hell of a struggle. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Maybe you didn’t need to hear that. Maybe you did. If this podcast is really supposed to be a record for me, then yeah, I have to leave that in. I have released a book and my imposter syndrome is so comfortable camping out in my head that it immediately undercut what everyone else is calling an achievement. 

And look, there were two prongs to that approach, you could say. One is that I just don’t feel any non-anxiety related feelings that strongly largely because of the fatigue. Being anxious is tiring. I was surprised when I first acknowledged that because this is something of my normal, but yeah, it is exhausting. And it makes so many other things harder.

But on the other hand, I think it’s easy for me to think of a book release as two steps. I go from the book not existing to the book existing. It’s a switch that gets flipped from off to on. To me, it’s just one small step, but lately, as I’ve been trying to think of content for this feed (and no offense meant. I just wanted to make a list of topics so these long periods of silence don’t keep happening), I’ve had to dissect the process and actually count the many steps involved. 

And at that point, I was tempted to disengage, which isn’t unrelated to what I do in therapy, I guess. But if so, then I really needed to buckle down. 

So okay, let’s map out in very broad terms what goes into a book, and we will use my most recent one as an example. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Step 1. Have an idea. 

Or maybe that’s not the first step. I don’t know. There might be times where there’s reading for inspiration involved. Or going to places and seeing a view. Or maybe it’s a conversation. Regardless, there should be a spark, whether or not you had to set up for it. Call setting up for said spark step zero and then everyone gets a point on the board, I guess. But you have to start with an idea of sorts.

To use my newest release as an example, kind of, Songbird’s Call is related to Danger of the Light, which is a book that just came to me after seeing that viral footage of the anglerfish swimming to the surface earlier this year. Anglerfish had a specific place in my own story. I was an avid viewer of early YouTube, meaning that I knew Nerdfighteria–the online community built around the Vlogbrothers Hank and John Green–but if you don’t know, the anglerfish became someone synonymous with Hank Green and almost a secret code for nerdfighters (as the fandom was called) to signal to each other that they were part of the same community. The Green brothers even sold anglerfish plushies at various points, and I know I have one, though for the life of me, I can’t remember where it is in my apartment, but I know I never chose to get rid of it.

And so, the anglerfish was primed for some sort of symbolism in my mind. But the situation itself was poetic at first glance, although–I know–the science wasn’t so glamorous. In reality, that viral fish was probably dying. Something was likely malfunctioning in its body causing it to rise out of a depth where it could navigate. Once it was in a different pressure zone, it was screwed, essentially, and it likely died shortly after the footage cut off. 

But most people weren’t thinking of that, and so, there was something beautiful about the sight before us, about a fish that lived in darkness swimming towards the light. And even for those who did kind of know what was going on, they found comfort that the fish knew the light in those final minutes.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Which isn’t to say that the light is always good or worth it. Frankly, I have flashes of irritating pessimism from time to time, and that was such a time. Or maybe it wasn’t just that. Maybe it was this need to interrogate the idea because you can’t be sure until you do. It’s like fact checking but when there are no facts to check.

Also I know a thing or too about ill-advised trips to the figurative light. Or that’s what I think about certain romantic impulses, anyway. 

I haven’t been in love too often, but when I am there’s usually a very good reason not to act on it. Which is a hard thing to explain. I mean, even Taylor Swift has a song called “Ruin the Friendship” which does seem to be advising you to catch the figurative grenade by risking it all just to not live in regret. And in the situation she describes in the song, it makes sense. 

I’m sure it’s good advice for a lot of people. But I knew I was different. Because even without taking that step, I knew it was not going to go well. 

But the step has an appeal. Much like the light appears beautiful when you first see it, there’s something intoxicating about approaching the beauty and wonder of those I’ve fallen for, even though I know I shouldn’t have.

And from that comparison came Danger of the Light.

But what if I expanded it beyond the senses and looked at the way grief and heartache can come from or be related to intense sensory experiences of love, even if it would be more figurative than literal. And what other animal could represent sound like a bird and its song? So a songbird. 

That didn’t feel like it took a lot. It just came to me. But there isn’t much more to say about that.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

So Step 2, outline.

And frankly, I hardly ever do this. Should I? Probably. But sometimes I have a sense of where it is going to go, and I just act on it. I might jot down a couple notes if it feels like my head is moving way too fast for my hands. But sometimes I don’t even do that. 

Step 3. Write.

And that feels reductive, but I’m not sure how else to explain that. I string together words to paint the image in my head. And they have to be done one at a time. I have to arrange the pieces of every sentence. 

It’s not that this has come easily to me. It’s more like, there is an impulse to do this that I can’t ignore, usually . I have notebooks and notepads for when I’m away from my computer. Sometimes I sneak a sentence or two when I’m at work. And when I’m at home, that’s really the main thing I want to do. I like hanging out in the Twitch chats of my friends’ channels, but at the same time, I’m usually multi-tasking. I’m listening and moderating but also writing. Sometimes I go live, and I’m usually writing. Or editing.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

And that’s the next step. What’s technically step 4. Editing. And this is where everything goes array because yeah, you could put this all under one umbrella term, and it would make sense to do that, but there can be different phases of editing. It’s a conversation between you and your editor or editors. And you might even have beta readers. I don’t. And honestly, that should probably be its own episode. (Sigh) So add that to my list, I guess. 

But I have an editor. And I could talk about that and how I found her. For now, let me just explain what happens with the editing. I take my draft, and I look over it once and make any changes I know need to be made. Sometimes I redirect the story mid-draft, and I usually make notes about that as I go. So I make those corrections because I think that’s how I can save time. My editor is going to tell me the same thing. So… Also, it’s where my head is anyway, and it just makes the story so much more cohesive. 

But then it goes to the editor who will give me notes. And in my experience, what I get back from the editor can vary. It’s partially because I have so many first drafts across forms and various years that. Well, it’s a lot of different variables. My editor and I take each piece in isolation, and she figures out what it needs and then we can make a plan. 

For Songbird’s Call, it’s a novella. And a rather fresh one that’s an installment of a larger series that has clear parameters. So it has a relatively simple plot and a straightforward lesson. So that saved us a couple rounds of revision. 

But also, what helped with the creation of this book is that–much like Danger of the Light–I’m drawing from my own fears. Do I love too much? Too strongly? Currently, no, but I know there’s a destructive impulsive buried within me that I have up until this point been controlling.

Dramatic, I know. But I think with the expansive power to create comes the power to destroy. They are too parts of one whole. One has to happen for the other to occur. And to me, it’s all about being strategic. But it’s hard being strategic. 

I have been using this series to somewhat help me strategize or to at least unpack my anxieties. And in that way, the lack of accomplishment suddenly becomes more obvious. Because writing about your fears is not a cure for those fears. Releasing these books might help me anchor my thoughts, but it doesn’t really resolve them or the alleged conundrum I am facing. And I guess if I’m focused on that aspect of them , it’s really not going to feel like an achievement. 

But I guess that raises some other conundrums. If I use my writing to work through emotions that can’t be purged with a simple upload, then is the feeling of achievement ever going to come? Its normal throne is otherwise occupied by worry and distress. That’s a weight that I can’t easily move for something that admittedly I don’t value as much as I should. And I say that specifically because there is something about me that minimizes or undercuts my achievements. I don’t allow myself to feel good, and if it happens I regard the sensation with a great deal of suspicion. So there’s that to consider, that inclination to undercut my well being for reasons I don’t fully understand. There is a reason. There has to be, but I haven’t begun to unpack it yet. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

To finish off the list,Step 5(ish, although with how back and forth editing can be, that numbering system really doesn’t work anymore) once I edit, I have to design the book, and I usually wait until this point to do any of that because I am really bad at blurbs. The Queen of Cups mentioned in the credits of this podcast is a friend of mine who has been very kind in helping me, and I give her that moniker because it’s a nickname the both of us understand but doesn’t expose either of us. I know her professionally, which means you can figure out who I am if you find her, and that’s not a great thing for either of us for different reasons. So she helps me with the blurb and then I commission an artist to make the full cover.

I have a spreadsheet of artists that I’ve come across over the years and some notes on what I think their strengths are and what sort of projects I think they would be good at. There’s also Fiverr which isn’t super great as a strategy, but I can’t deny that it exists. 

Step 6, technically. I upload the files to Draft2Digital, the distribution platform I’ve been using. It’s fairly straightforward, and currently, it scales well to my needs. And I can’t imagine what or when I’ll have to change all of that. I’m not looking forward to it, though, because I am a creature of habit. But I can’t deny that the point exists. 

Also, just as a side note, while I would generally recommend Draft2Digital, for simplicity’s sake. if you want to sell on Amazon don’t use any of the options on Draft2Digital to post to Amazon and just do it directly on Kindle Direct Publishing. It’s technically a lesser headache although the cover upload system on KDP is an absolute nightmare. But Amazon and Draft2Digital just don’t communicate well, and this is a lesser of two evils situation. I.e., you can get your book out there.

But I currently don’t do any Kindle Unlimited or Amazon exclusives, so yes, there is a cut into my figurative profits or money on the table, however you say it, but this is just what I want to do. And maybe that’s another, another episode topic for this podcast.

Oh my word, I have so much I need to talk about. And so much to write and do. And just… I don’t know. I don’t want to say I feel overwhelmed because I don’t. It’s more like I’m anticipating that I should be feeling that. And it’s that disconnect that’s really getting to me.

But for now, with that, I’m MJ Bailey, and I’m a writer, I guess. Whatever that means.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

The Writer’s Open Book is a podcast from Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, and produced by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. The logo was made by Keldor777 on Twitch. And to the Queen of Cups in my life, you know who you are, thank you for helping me process so much of this writing journey and for all your support. I couldn’t have done it without you.