After I Hit Publish and What’s Next

It’s out there, my first self-published sexy story. After waging all out war on self-doubt, fear of failure and all those other nasty things, I finished my story and hit publish on Saturday evening.

On Sunday morning, my story was live on Amazon. So I got busy and set up my Author Central page, did a blog post that the book was live, spread the news to the very few people that knew I was doing this, and got to work on my next story. I also set up my Goodreads author page.

It’s been a whirlwind of activity.

But now that I have everything set up (at least I hope I do!) I can get back to the most important part of all of this, the writing.

What Surprised Me Most

I really suffer from self-doubt and some unfounded fear about my work. I thought I would hesitate about hitting that publish button on Amazon. But I think I stayed so busy Saturday, that by the time I was ready to hit publish, I was too exhausted to feel much of anything.

I’d spent the entire day researching keywords, doing another read through on my story, coming up with front and back matter for the book, formatting the manuscript to upload it, that by the time I had it all done (which was 8:30 PM), I wanted to be that — done.

I hit publish and . . . that was it. I was done. I was too exhausted to feel much else. I kept thinking, “I did it.” Over and over and that was about it.

What I’m trying to say is I became too busy to even acknowledge self-doubt and fear. I had built up momentum the past week and just kept pushing forward and somehow it kept all my doubts and fears at bay. I kept reminding myself that I wanted this.

The Next Step

So what’s next? Well, another sexy story of course!

I’m hoping to avoid some frustration I had with the last story. This story, like the last one, I just dove in and wrote it. No plan, just started writing to see what my little noodle brain could come up with.

But instead of jumping in with edits right away like I did the last story, this time I’m taking time to get to know my characters better and, using the draft I’ve written, make an outline to help refine my story. Because I know, like the last story, I need to redraft this one.

I’m trying to push and improve my writing skills with each story, hoping to make better stories. Whether they turn out better is all subjective. I want to keep doing the best work that I can with where I’m at in this process. For me, it’s the story that matters.

So stay tuned sexy readers, because I should have more updates on my progress in a few days.