Ananda Lima on Conquering Pre-Publication Anxiety With Crafting

I am not a crafty person. I am clumsy, disoriented, spatially confused. I sometimes have to pause and think to identify where left and right are (touching the writing callus on my finger). I need to rotate the map on my phone precisely so that it matches the landmarks I see in order to find my way. I can’t turn things around in my mind. My hands are not steady. I can’t cut a straight line, or even trace along a ruler without messing up. So I usually keep my creative endeavors more abstract, using machines to make the translation between the idea and their physical manifestations (yes to writing and digital photography, no to painting, baking, clay). But pre-publication is a weird time. And I found myself, a few months before my debut, on my kitchen counter, in a mess of paper, scissors, pencil and glue. All images courtesy of the author I had just finished the last round of proofreading. The different rounds of edits had gone beautifully. My editor and I were a magical, very lucky match: she was one of the best readers I had in my life, seeing subtle nuances in the writing, little things I was resigned to have in the manuscript even if only for myself. But it was also a difficult time. Now that the editing was finished, I felt like I was supposed to be working on something, but didn’t know what exactly. I began feeling very anxious. I had heard that writers can become a little freaked out before their books come out. Occasionally I had warning signs that the anxiety would come, an article or book mentioning that anxiety: other writers who have been through tentatively checking in “so how are you holding up?” I noticed that for me the anxiety was not around big existential questions, but they revolved around a specific questions “shouldn’t I be doing something for the book?” Not so much “is the book even good?” “Are people going to hate it?” or “What am I doing with my life?” It was more a […]

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