Pub Day Weirdness
Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty, my first YA novel, hit stores yesterday. I had a good pub day, mostly. My editor sent me the sweetest little slideshow thingy. I googled myself incessantly. Our tractor finally got delivered. (I know. Tractor? But that’s another blog.) I went out to lunch with My Man. All things considered, it was lovely.
Okay, this is going to sound really ungrateful, but let’s face it: pub day is incredibly anti-climactic.
There’s a phenomenon that happens when you get something you’ve wanted for a long time—something you’ve waited for and built up to ridiculous proportions. It’s like Christmas when you’re little, or having sex for the first time when you’re a teenager: there’s so much build-up, so much pleasure in the experience of imagining what it might be like, that the actual event is just…not all that.
Like have you ever planned a vacation for ages and then you get there and your hair’s all flat from the plane and the tropical plants aren’t quite as…tropical as you imagined, and you flop down on the hotel bed going, “Is this it?”
Anyway, that’s kind of how pub day is. I’ve been through it four times now, and it’s always a little flat-hair-fresh-off-the-plane-strange. Just like with Christmas and sex and tropical vacations, you get past the sad little disappointed kid feeling and then you’re into it again, but somehow that moment has to be there. We need a word for that feeling.
I don’t know why we humans are built like that; I really don’t. My mom always used to say, “Anticipation is greater than the realization,” an expression my grandfather used before her. That little nugget of homespun wisdom conceals a deep human mystery. Maybe it’s that our imaginations can fly so high, our waking reality just can’t keep up with our sense of possibility.
Or, you know, maybe I’m just a spoiled little bee-atch…
Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty, my first YA novel, hit stores yesterday. I had a good pub day, mostly. My editor sent me the sweetest little slideshow thingy. I googled myself incessantly. Our tractor finally got delivered. (I know. Tractor? But that’s another blog.) I went out to lunch with My Man. All things considered, it was lovely.
Okay, this is going to sound really ungrateful, but let’s face it: pub day is incredibly anti-climactic.
There’s a phenomenon that happens when you get something you’ve wanted for a long time—something you’ve waited for and built up to ridiculous proportions. It’s like Christmas when you’re little, or having sex for the first time when you’re a teenager: there’s so much build-up, so much pleasure in the experience of imagining what it might be like, that the actual event is just…not all that.
Like have you ever planned a vacation for ages and then you get there and your hair’s all flat from the plane and the tropical plants aren’t quite as…tropical as you imagined, and you flop down on the hotel bed going, “Is this it?”
Anyway, that’s kind of how pub day is. I’ve been through it four times now, and it’s always a little flat-hair-fresh-off-the-plane-strange. Just like with Christmas and sex and tropical vacations, you get past the sad little disappointed kid feeling and then you’re into it again, but somehow that moment has to be there. We need a word for that feeling.
I don’t know why we humans are built like that; I really don’t. My mom always used to say, “Anticipation is greater than the realization,” an expression my grandfather used before her. That little nugget of homespun wisdom conceals a deep human mystery. Maybe it’s that our imaginations can fly so high, our waking reality just can’t keep up with our sense of possibility.
Or, you know, maybe I’m just a spoiled little bee-atch…
2 comments:
Here's a hug, an imaginary bottle of champaign (hear the pop?), a parade complete with marching band and float just for you, and your Rock Star tiara.
Your book is FABU, btw. I learned that word (fabu) from reading it. lol
No you're not spoiled! I've heard this time and time again from writers, and certainly experienced it for myself. I found receiving my first official copy of my book to be way more exciting than knowing it was finally available to people :)
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