The Perfectionist Sits Back and Lets Go of Control
Dear Reader,
My new book, my first book of fiction, my first novel is coming out this month. The cover reveal will be out this month, and the book title will be revealed on the 14th of July, and it will be on Instagram first.
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And you know what? Even I haven’t seen the cover yet.
I am so used to doing things all by myself that this is new for me to have someone else handling the back-end works of putting a book out.
In 2016, I drew the design of Curtain Call for the graphic designer to recreate digitally. I designed the cover for The Art of Grieving myself in 2017. Then in 2018 I hired a designer for the book cover of The Art of Letting Go. After so many iterations, I finally selected one cover for the e-book. But for the print version, I again designed it myself. And then, from The Art of Healing to Between Us (a tiny booklet of micro-poems) and then to Tread Softly on Their Heart - it was all my designs.
But times have changed now and so has my work. My new book is a work of fiction and is already picked up by a Traditional Publishing House. They are doing the editing and designing work.
The good news is that I feel calm. I trust their judgement. And I am okay delegating work instead of micro-managing everything. Is it going to create better results? Who knows! But all I have learned in my healing journey is that - you don’t have to do everything by yourself.
It’s okay to take a backseat. It’s okay to relax. It’s okay to let go.
It’s okay to not be in control. It’s okay to not know what’s happening behind the scenes.
The thing is we all have a perfectionist inside us. And that personality keeps screaming to us that whatever we are doing is not perfect yet. It makes us impatient. And in group settings, or office settings, we end up taking the work on our own plate instead of trusting the other person’s caliber. The perfectionist inside us screams to us - we will do a better job of it than someone else will ever do
Do we really do a better job? That’s usually up for debate because most of the criticism of the work is on subjective things rather than objective ones.
Let’s just say we like to see the final product match the image we had in our heads.
It gets easier to delegate work when we aren’t married to our ideas, to the images we have in our heads.
‘Feel free to be creative about it,’ I texted them as I leaned my back on the sofa. I did drop a few suggestions but I am allowing them to surprise me. Hopefully, it will be in a good way.
We will find out soon. Stay tuned for the book name reveal on the 14th of July. I am excited that it’s my first book of fiction, and your response and feedback will decide whether I will be writing more fictional stories or not.
Few more days to go!
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With love,
Sanhita Baruah
SoulVersing with Sanhita is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
