My adventures in self-publishing: New novel and self-doubt

It’s me again! I have a couple of things that I feel the need to tell everyone. First I’d like to announce I’ve started writing a new novel and before you ask It is not this sequel to Spellbound although that is at the beginning stages and will be put aside until later this year. The new novel will be my first attempt at an adult Romance, it will be titled Beautiful Mistake. As for the premise of the book, I will release another post later this month with a full summary and possibly a teaser chapter or two.

Now that I’ve covered that I’d like to get down to the real reason for this post. A question popped into my head earlier today and I was curious to know what you all thought so here it is: Have you ever had self-doubt feeling like you’re not doing the right thing or that you completely failed? Lately, it seems no matter what I do I can’t get rid of the feeling of self-doubt and dread it seems to me that even though I managed to accomplish this big goal it doesn’t feel that way. Sure everybody tells me what a big accomplishment this is publishing your first book but for some reason, it feels like there’s something missing like I’m waiting for something. The weird thing about it all is it’s not a depressive feeling it’s just kind of an emptiness.

Maybe it’s because when I started this I had such high expectations for this book and when the sales didn’t translate the self-doubt started to creep in. Was I really cut out for this? And I know what you’re thinking if you want to be a writer you have to have thick skin and persevere because not every single thing you right everybody’s going to love. But I couldn’t see that I thought to myself is my writing that awful? I had so many people around me telling me that I was just being ridiculous but to me, they didn’t get it didn’t understand I put all this work into this story which I absolutely love and now that it was out there no one cared about it.

It was at that moment that I questioned everything did I do the right thing? Should I just give up? And on and on it went like some sort of sick and twisted Tilt-A-Whirl and to tell you the truth even as I’m writing this new story I still can’t shake the self-doubt. Truth is I’m scared that everything I put out will be a failure especially considering the last two months I’ve sold a big fat zero. Scared that I will never be able to do what I love for a living. So I guess the ending to this post would be does this happen to all writers and if so how do you put the self-doubt behind you and move forward?

Let me know your thoughts or comments I love hearing from all of you.