Am I doing this right? 🤷‍♀️

Writing Odessa Week 7 📖

Hi! If you’re new here, I’m Mariah. I just published my first book, The Pattern Shop and I’m starting my second novel, Odessa. This is a new series called “Write a book with me.” Each week I’ll be sharing updates from the messy middle of writing my next book while juggling all the other LIFE stuff. I hope it will inspire you in your own creative process! 😊

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Hello.

TBH, it’s been a rough couple of days. The in-person self-publishing class I had scheduled got cancelled for the 2nd month in a row with just one sign-up. A friend shared a hard thing. I shared something hard.

The house is a mess, my clothes don’t fit right, and I caught myself falling asleep last night wondering, “Is this really worth it?”

Maybe it would be easier to have a second baby, commit to the early motherhood years, give into the domestic impulse. 🤷‍♀️

What I know to be true in moments like this is that my brain can conflate a few setbacks or hard moments into concrete evidence I’m failing as a human being. Not only am I doing everything wrong, it jeers, I AM WRONG.

Panic shows up in the place of patience and suddenly I think bailing ship and clinging onto a shiny lifeboat is the only answer. GET ME OUT OF HERE, my anxiety yells.

This doesn’t feel good, and that means we are not safe.

This is the face of “I’m trying to hold it all together but inwardly freaking out.” Image credit: “Model fixing her hair in the studio” by Édouard Vuillard

The anti-dote I’m still learning to practice in the face of self-doubt? Gentle perseverance. It’s the only way I was able to finish a book that took me a decade to write. It’s the only way I wrote 500 words for Odessa today, in spite of really really really not wanting to.

Another thing I’m learning? Self-doubt spirals take energy. They take time. Once I let them really get going, it can take hours or days to soothe my nervous system back to a place where I can meaningfully engage with my creativity. Which is okay.

And also…what if I channeled that energy and time into believing in myself, instead? Not ignoring information, like a workshop being cancelled, but taking it for what it is: information. Not proof I suck and am never gonna “make it.”

What also helps? Not doing this alone. When we share our fears out loud, it gives others a chance to say, “Me, too,” and to hear what it would be like to talk to ourselves like a friend.

I hope these letters do that for you. 💗

This week’s prompt: What in your life needs gentle perseverance instead of panic? What if patience was the remedy instead of pivoting? What would you choose to do (or not do) next?

Keep reading for a sneak peek from Katarina’s story that’s eerily starting to resemble our present moment, big news about the benefit concert (it has a name now), and notes from the garden — bunny visitors and mystery seedlings included. 🐇