Neurotic is the New Black...

So For the First Time has been out now for just over a week. It’s seems to be right in there rank wise with all the other Supers so that’s good. But no Amazon reviews yet and only a handful of Goodread reviews from people not Molly O’Keefe. Who is super supportive by the way – I don’t know what I would do without her.
And once again as an author you take that trip to neurotic land. Yes, I’m really happy that the few people who have read it seemed to really like it. I’m grateful Eileen hand sold a copy to a nurse by reading it out loud. Thanks Eileen! I was thrilled to actually have people request some giveaways so that’s awesome too.
Why can’t I just be happy with that? Why do I care that internet bloggers haven’t read or reviewed it? Why am I stressing that some of the other books in my month already have Amazon reviews and I don’t.
Because I’m a writer silly! It’s never good. When you have a ton of reviews there are some bad mixed in there and that makes you sad. When you have no reviews you think nobody is reading your book and that makes you sad.
I’m trying to imagine book release Nirvana. I don’t think it exists.
Sure you want to be the top ranked book. Yes, you want tons of glorious reviews… you know without having to buy them. But I wonder would that make us satisfied? Would we just sit back, put our feet up and think, yep, I’ve done it.
Or would that just come with its own set of problems? Would we stress about trying to get more reviews? Would we fear that our next book won’t be as good and we’ll worry about disappointing our reader?
Probably. So the moral of this story… writers are nuts and we’re never happy. And that’s a good thing. Because what you realize when you’ve been in this business long enough -  it’s the neurosis that keeps us going.