Silver Lining, Published, Impostor

Dear friends and family,

I was determined to find a silver lining to the forced return to Wrangell in the middle of my ambitious cruising adventures for this summer.  When I think back on my life I now realize that some of my most awful or traumatic life events turned out to have a silver lining. Of course I couldn’t see it at the time, but in hindsight it sure is clear. Some examples:

1. The family business unravels- I end up becoming an ocean sailor and get to sail more than halfway round the globe. And probably motivated me to have a successful accounting career.
2. Shipwrecked- made such a good story that I managed to get the feature story in magazines in four countries ( and maybe gave me the idea that I could be a writer)
3. Boat Fire- eventually got the defective part manufacturer to fund a complete rebuild of the boat and all her systems.

Those are big deals and I know that a failed heater is not. Still, I felt the need to find silver.

I have a very close friend who we called the day after the boat fire to remind us of a silver lining. Peter ( the silver lining guy)  reminded us that neither of us died in what could easily have been a fatal situation, it happened in very calm weather, we were rescued right away and the boat did not burn enough to sink. 

We ( Liz and I) hadn’t focused on that as we were so focused on the boat. Thanks Peter, we kind of overlooked those details!

So, I set myself a goal of making progress on publishing one of my bike touring stories in between troubleshooting the heater and waiting for the next parts to show up. Each day time was put into learning the next piece of the puzzle of publishing: new software to download, then learn how to use it, then actually use it until the next tool was needed and on and on.

The new heater pump did come, I installed it the next day, and like I mentioned before, all systems go.

But I was close. Close to the actual “being published” state. So, I spent  three more days deeply immersed in the publishing process. Each step bringing me closer, until I felt so close that I spent two days completely immersed, deep inside the laptop and the publishing world. I could feel and see the end coming up. As I was nearing a finish in what eventually was the final evening of work, I took a break to breathe and have a dinner and get my head out of the laptop to refresh. 

When I returned I had been timed out of the process I was in (assuming it would be “auto saved”) allowing me to have to go back and redo what took me about four hours the first time to complete now in less than two. I was learning. (Turned out though that I inadvertently inserted an unedited file in place of the edited file for my introduction, so maybe I wasn’t learning that well🙂)

There would be steps in the process that would show an error message like “not fitting pages” or “cover process unfinished” and then I would take up to an hour to try to understand what in the heck they were telling me so I could save (see, I am learning) and go to the next step. 

Four hours after dinner, now about ten PM, I showed the Colombia book as being published on Amazon, subject to their review that could take 72 hours, but no more effort needed on my part.

Yup, a published book author. That had been a dream for over fifty years. Since I first read adventure stories as a twenty year old when I sat in Hemingway’s cafe in Paris with no adventures worth writing about. 

Pumped. You bet. Did I for a second think it was literature, not at all. It was simply a collection of my blogs. But still I was excited that the book was out there and that I was able to manage to learn the publishing process enough to get there. 

I took a long evening walk to settle myself down and thought I did. A big step for me in a life dream. One that lay dormant for many, many years, occasionally seeing the light of day, but little since I was about age twenty one, with just that brief resurface with the shipwreck story.

No way was my mind quiet enough to let me sleep, and when it came it was often interrupted and not deep.

So, I awoke the next morning to remind myself of my success of the night before, crawled my sleep deprived self out of bed to do a short walk around the perimeter of the marina to enjoy the morning.

I first stopped  to thank Ken for his inspiration and help, and let him know what I did. Ken publishes as K. E. Hoover a few really good novels taking place in or near Wrangell. He regularly encouraged me. 

Then it hit. Hit hard and fast. Think of a whirl of mosquitoes of thoughts surrounding your head, staying with you, focused on your eyes, nose, ears. Can’t get away, walk faster and they still stay. Those negative thoughts were powerful and released an unhealthy dose of chemicals to flood my body.

Even the best writers I have read said they suffer this. It is called “impostor syndrome”. Imagine even Stephen King thinking to himself that what he writes is crap, no one will like it and he does not deserve to be published. That is what he shares in writing forums.

So, I should not be surprised to be hit. Still, the force of it, the deepness of it, and the crippling effects of it. I could barely walk, much less think.

Who in the hell did I think I was? I am an accountant not a writer. The subject matter is crap, the writing worse and the editing and publishing results embarrassingly horrible. I have no training in this. I can even blame Amazon for allowing it to be too easy for allowing my crap to be published. 

My neck was sticking way out. The Australians call it “tall poppy”, in that the high poppies get cut by the lawnmower while the lower ones stay safely with the others below the cutting level-not to be noticed. The tall ones deserve to be chopped. I am now sticking my tall poppy self out there on the internet, on Amazon. Way out of my comfort or safety zone. 

I could also ask myself ” Isn’t it about time that you let go of the fear of sticking out? ” “What might you be if you no longer cared what others think of you?” ” What if you spent the rest of your life pushing those self imposed constraints, and sharing what you find with others?”

I could think of it as an experiment. Like my book subtitle “An experiment using a real live human…”

So, yes I’ve learned a lot. Maybe I could be like Thomas Edison running out of ways an electric lightbulb filament wouldn’t work, leaving him with one that did.

I could run out of ways to do things horribly until something good comes out. That’s it, that will be my mantra on this effort. One down. 

Sending love,

Charley