One book later

New book, and struggles with perfectionism.

Perfectionism can be crippling.

I myself have been crippled by it several times as a writer.

That is why the course I used to teach in Writing and Self-publishing Short Stories was so focused on actually getting the writing done so that we published our anthology in the last session of the course.

I wanted to help my students get over the perfectionist thought of “one day I will write the perfect book.”

However, I recently had a relapse.

My last newsletter update was a long time ago. In it, I wrote about the launch of the upcoming course, “Writing a nonfiction book”.

But then, I was hit by doubt:

I was the author of two novels and one nonfiction book, but the nonfiction book was a long time ago, and although I had taught numerous iterations of my creative writing course, that course was about writing a short story; I had never before taught nonfiction writing. How could I be sure that I properly updated on what needed to be done to write and self-publish a nonfiction book in the best way?

So in the last newsletter update I wrote that I would produce a new nonfiction book. That way I could update my experience as well as have two nonfiction books under my belt and feel less like an imposter when I started teaching the course.

In order to make the process quick, I opted to convert the dissertation I wrote when I graduated from the certification course in Jungian psychotherapy. The bulk of the book was written already, so I was sure I would get it done quickly and return triumphantly with a newsletter update to announce my new book and the launch of the course. What could go wrong?

Well, perfectionism struck again. The same perfectionism that had convinced me I needed to have another nonfiction book out before I was ready to teach a nonfiction writing and publishing course. To be fair, it was to a great extent also an encounter with reality: a book is not the same as a dissertation, and it needs to be set out differently and be given added value in order to be appealing and useful to readers.

So now, three months later, I have finally completed the writing and publishing of Ethics and Personality: How Psychological Type Determines Ethical Values.

The above image is actually a snip from the front of the paperback cover, because I have not created an ebook version. I considered that its topic is too narrow to warrant an ebook, and that people who are sufficiently into this topic would probably be ready to buy the paperback.

This book can be especially interesting for people who are into personality types in general and Jungian typology in particular. But also for people who are interested in ethical values and how a person’s number one value is determined.

It is a narrow topic, but writing it has refreshed and updated my knowledge about writing and publishing nonfiction books.

One thing I have learned during this process is how to design my own covers. I used to always hire a cover designer, especially for paperback books that were much harder to design than ebooks.

AI has made this process far simpler, and from now on I will design everything myself. The perfectionist in me is jumping for joy.

After lots of “writer’s torture”, my perfectionist part was triumphant when I hit Publish on Amazon on my birthday (no less), only a few days after being certified as a psychotherapist, and then the book made its first sale the day after going live.

The way of perfectionism seemed vindicated.

However, then at the same time I was hit by misfortune in two other areas of life, and all of a sudden these triumphs didn’t seem all that important.

The lesson I am drawing from this is that if you are a writer then write, publish, get your books out there. Do the best you can and make it as correct as you can, but don’t stand on the threshold of publication giving it too much importance. Get it done and celebrate, knowing that life is beautiful but never “perfect”.

This is why when I launch my courses in Writing a Nonfiction Book and Writing a Novel, if you are interested in writing a book, the emphasis will be on getting that idea of yours into reality so that instead of holding it in your head, you will hold it in your hands.