What happens next - dealing with after you're published

Writing a book was tremendous fun.  I love it!
Working with amazing people to build these words into a book was amazing.

But now it's done and out there in the world, I'm having a hard time dealing with the aftermath.  

The good:  People are enjoying the book and tell me about how much they like it.  I hear stories about them going out into the world and trying something new for the very first time.  They didn't have courage before, but for some reason, reading my book gave them the motivation to try new things.  I love this.  I want to listen to these people forever because as they learn new things, I learn things from them.  This is my favourite part!

The difficult:  People are calling me an expert and asking me for help or advise.  

To me, I don't feel like an expert.  I'm just a girl with a typewriter that got frustrated waiting for someone else to write this book.  I thought what I was doing was showing off how much there is still to learn on the topic and how little I know.  I also wrote the book to stop this kind of thing so I could just say "that's a great question, I know just the book that will answer it for you."

The unpleasant:  Not all the responses have been kind.  This was expected because I wrote the book as something of a challenge when I declared that there is no one right way to do this stuff.  I didn't quite expect the amount of time and energy people would invest in trying to correct me, or make me be their puppet and redact all the things they think I said wrongly.

There are a lot of emails in my inbox.  So many so that I had to turn on my spam filters to get it down to a manageable size.  This means I'm probably missing out on so many wonderful emails.

But the thing is, even though I'm a writer now, I'm not good at writing.  I'm still an unfunctional mess of dyslexia.  Writing takes time.  I only have about half an hour a day to dedicate to emails and one email takes about two hours to write!  I could dedicate more time, but then there is no time left for creating things.  

I just want to spend all my time creating more stuff, but this last project keeps sucking me back.  Almost to the point that I can't create more because I'll be biofouled.


How do we deal with what comes after?  
How do we maintain creativity for the next project?  

I will say, you must have done an amazing job of marketing. I have four books out and no one is beating a path to my door. :) Of course I've done very little marketing. People do enjoy what I wrote, and yes I also get the "you should have"s. Since they are all fiction, no one is calling me an expert at anything, which is good.

One thing you may want to try is putting up an auto-reply if your e-mail system will support it. Something like:

"Thank you for your e-mail. I love hearing from my readers, and be assured that I read each e-mail that comes in. However, I get such a volume of mail that I can only answer a few."

Then put in answers to the most frequently asked questions and DON'T answer those questions when they come in as separate e-mails. Possibly put in something about dyslexia and how hard it is for you to write out responses (you'll get a lot of positives because you're not pretending to be perfect) but keep it under 200 words if possible. You may even want to add it at the end of your book so people get the message and don't SEND so many.

The spam filter is a good step. Auto-response I think would also take care of some of it, leaving only those that really need your personal attention. It also means you can ignore the negative.

Another thing to consider is that writing is work (work we enjoy, but still work), and I seriously doubt that you've bothered to take a vacation. Set it aside. Let yourself recharge. You'll know when you're ready to dive in head first again, and it'll probably be sooner than you think.

Expert is an interesting word.

While it can mean someone who knows everything about a particular subject, I probably wouldn’t trust anyone who said they did.

More likely, it means someone who, through education and experience (preferably heavy on the experience) knows more than most about a particular subject.

That would seem to be you.

Besides, you don’t seem to be holding yourself out to be an expert - others are saying that. You don’t control what others say or think, and I wouldn’t put much stock in opinions of others I don’t know or trust.

Your words have value, and are worth reading.

> expert

People do that. Comes with the species, I guess. Try to be kind, I think that's mostly what this stuff requires. <g>

Generically thoughtful and BRIEF. People almost never really want info - they want a touch, or a guru, or a leader, or an idol.... Anything to skip or take the place of a difficult effort on their part to grow and come to grips themselves. That's not really as horrible as it sounds, but still, pretty much that way. Silly us. So don't worry about giving each question careful analysis and individually tailored wisdom. It really won't help. Not what this is about.

I think Lauren has some very good ideas. I especially liked "answer the common questions" and post that FAQ somewhere people have to cross to get to you. Maybe a link embedded in your auto-reply? Then, as mentioned, don't waste time on those questions ever again.

People as a group to be dealt with are a different animal than people as individuals. Rules and values built to handle individuals don't work so well on groups, crowds, mobs. Rethink, cobble up, evolve some new framework. You gotta...


Also, I think there's definitely an emotional switch that happens after big effort is suddenly stopped. Don't discount that or take it lightly. Allow a little time, adjust direction, let parts of you rest, carry on gently and thoughtfully.

Cheers,
Rufus

I am delighted to return to the Permies forum and learn that you have successfully published your book!

I am also a writer (although no book yet) and have recently become more concerned with the 'business' part of the work - setting up a social media presence, submitting work to appropriate platforms/publishers, trying to develop positive relations with other writers, editors, publishers, etc. This has resulted in me spending at least half my "writing" time not actually creating story, although having established some systems/routines now I'm getting some time back.  

It can be quite frustrating, having to deal with writing "business" rather than writing. But it does seem to be the way it is for most writers these days. It is what results from what seems to be an increasingly competitive creative writing environment, where it is more difficult to earn any money through writing then it used to be. (I sold a short story for under $4 the other day. It took me well over ten hours to write. How many other professions do we as a society recompense this way? No, I don't write to become rich, but I could certainly write more if it paid better then 30 cents an hour on a lucky day.)

I don't know that it has to be this way. I think there is probably still more then room for "reclusive" writers - or to put it another way, for writers who decide their energy is best spent creating rather then responding to responses to their creativity. I hope so.

Your strongest response to your questioners -fans and critics alike, is your next book.

I would never say writing is lucrative because of how many hours it takes to write almost anything. It really is a labor of love, kind of like farming, where if you tried to calculate a profit by hour, a person would die of frustration.