Of Monsters and Paint Chips

Congratulations to Rachel Tear and Michelle Alvarez! You both win a download of Bonnie’s wonderful novel! Please contact me ASAP with your information…and if you’d like to give it away as a gift, that’s cool, too! Tis the season!

Also, yesterday I posted an idea for giving Paint Chips as a download for Christmas. Click here to see what I mean.

Self Doubt, my friends, is a monster. A monster who enters, uninvited, and knocks everything off the shelves and smashes the breakables and eats all your chocolate. Even if you deny its existence, turn your face so that you can’t see it, shove cotton in your ears to drown out its noise.

Self Doubt is a big jerk.

And, let me tell you, that monster has tormented me my whole life.

What’s that? You, too?

You don’t say. Well, I’ll be honest, I feel a little better now.

I mean, as well as I can feel with my house ransacked by some jerk monster.

Seriously, I was planning on writing this pity party blog about how insecure I feel about “Paint Chips” releasing. How scared I am about the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. About how vulnerable I feel knowing that strangers are going to read a novel that is so deeply me. About how terrified I am that people I KNOW are going to read the deeply me novel. About how self promotion is just not my bag, baby. That I’ll alienate everyone I love because of the postings about the novel release…that is, except my hubby…he doesn’t have Facebook.

Nervous that someone will read the book and think, “This is not good”.

And then they will write about how not good it is. And that I will see it. That the monster will clothes line me on its way to smashing my coffee maker (I seriously would be sad about that).

But here’s the thing that I realized while I was sitting here, totally avoiding this blog post; the jerk monster isn’t as powerful as all that. Not really. The only way that the Self Doubt Beasts gains entry is because I let him in.

So what if I get a few bad reviews. I’m sure I’ll get some good reviews, too. And maybe a few middle of the road ones, as well. The review that counts is when, at the end of my days on earth, the Father says, “Well done”. That’s the review I really need to go for.

And, really, as vulnerable as it all feels, my readers won’t recognize the parts that make me feel exposed. It’s fiction. All’s well.

The self-promotion thing? That’s part of the gig. And, I suppose, if anyone becomes weary of it, they can hide me from their news feed. Just, please, don’t tell me. It might make me sad.

And if someone thinks and writes and says that my novel isn’t good, well, it might hurt. But I’ll be okay in the long run. Every time someone has told me that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough, it spurred me on. Made me work harder. Let me tell you, I’ve had to work really hard for all this. And I plan to work doubly hard on the second novel.

Let’s do something together, shall we? Let’s lock the jerk Self Doubt Monster out. He may not come in. We’ll help one another pick up the mess he’s made (I’m sure some of these monsters are she’s, too). And let’s just hold steady, not answering his knocking until he’s given up.

I think that, if we do this together, we’ll be safe.

Remember, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are precious, loved, and dear. Don’t think otherwise.

Leave the monster outside.

Who is ready for a give-away? I sure am! Today, I’m giving away a copy of “Inciting Incidents: 6 Stories of Fighting Disappointment in a Flawed World”

Just leave a comment below to enter the contest. I’ll announce the winner on Monday morning! 

Happy Weekend!