On getting out of your own way
First a few nice things to share:
The Boston Globe calls The Bullet Swallower “a novel of mesmerizing scope and ambition”
DailyKOs said it was “an audaciously told novel with an ending that is a full-hearted display of what happens with people care about others, and the value of a family legacy that united generations.”
I was interviewed in The Boston Globe about my long and torturous path to becoming a writer
The Bullet Swallower is a “Best of the Month” according to Kobo
HipLatina names TBS one of 20 Books by Latinx Authors Coming Out in 2024 You Need to Read
CrimeReads named it one of the most anticipated crime fiction books of 2024
It received a starred review from BookPage!
And supposedly the book will be in the 1/29 print issue of People Magazine but I haven’t been able to get a copy so if you have one please take a photo of it and send it to me!
The book comes out on Tuesday. As I shared in my last newsletter this moment has been a long, long time coming. And now that it’s here the panic is rising. It’s exciting to publish a book, but it’s also scary. You’re putting your whole heart and soul into something that’s going out into the world where people will judge it. In fact, you’re hoping that people judge it — reviews are what bring the arts into the public forum. My stomach is in knots right now hoping that people review the book, and that they enjoy it, even as I dread what they might say.
But my anxiety over reviews is also a little ironic because I don’t read reviews. At all. None of them.
I remember reading that the actress, Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones), never Googles herself to see what people are saying about her. She said something like, “If one person says I’m a stupid bitch, my brain will go, ‘Well, you’re a stupid bitch,’ and that’ll be the end of that.” Conan O’Brian also never reads his reviews. He said once on his podcast that he will never remember the good ones and will only fixate on the bad ones, and so it’s better to just avoid them altogether.
So I decided a long time ago, before my first book ever came out, that I wouldn’t read my reviews. Not the good ones, and not the bad ones. Like Conan, I know I won’t remember any of the lovely things people say about my work. I will only fixate on the one person who said my characters were flat, or my book was boring. And I don’t need that noise in my head. I have enough trouble silencing my own inner critic.
Most people have an inner critic (though maybe not the people who have no inner monologue, a discovery that I still haven’t recovered from). But while an inner critic might be helpful (maybe she encourages you to brush your hair before you leave the house, or talks you out of buying yet another outfit for your dog), in my case my inner critic is a bully who seems to exist to torture me.
Sort of like in IT when Pennywise is able to manifest as a person’s worst fears (like being a fanged clown isn’t frightening enough), my inner critic can shapeshift, moving from telling me my writing isn’t good to telling me not to eat dessert. It can turn good moments into bad ones, transforming a sense of satisfaction after turning in a draft into a sense of dread and shame that the work isn’t any good.
I’ve been thinking about all this as I’ve been adapting The Bullet Swallower for film, something I’ve dreamed about doing since the moment I typed the first line of the novel into a Word document. I’ve never written a screenplay before, and, while I knew the process would be hard, I didn’t know how hard it would be. I recently joked to a friend that it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done including raising children, and while this is (mostly) an exaggeration, there’s something that feels insurmountable about writing a good script. I’m really doubting that I can do it. That maybe I just don’t have the chops. And it’s hard to distinguish how much of this doubt comes from my inner critic, and how much is an honest appraisal of my current abilities.
Trying something new involves some amount of delusion. If I sign up to run a marathon, I have to believe I can do it, even if I’ve never run a mile. And I have to keep on believing I can do it even when I get cramps and side stitches and it takes me a year to get into shape. I have to show up every day believing that I have the ability. Because if I doubt myself, I won’t be able to stick it out when things get tough.
A magical thing happens when we believe in ourselves, too. If our belief is paired with effort, our beliefs and our abilities will eventually align. We will find that after months of training we have become a person who can complete a marathon. And that is an incredible feeling — to see yourself become the person you believed you were. But the only way to do this is to silence your inner critic. Get out of your own way. Have delusional beliefs in your own abilities. And stay out of your own way.
I have realized that I am my own worst enemy. That no one else ever holds me back except me. I think conquering my own self doubt is going to be the project of my life for the foreseeable future. But it’s not insurmountable. I probably just have to believe that I can do it.
Blessings to you all and I hope I will see you at a book event in the next few weeks!
xoxo
Elizabeth
OH! This is exactly what I needed to read this morning. Onward to getting out of my own way and back to writing.
Amen to any hack that helps with the the entire getting-out-of-one's-own-way endeavor.