When You Can’t Do All The Things

By Kerry Schafer

I don’t have an award wall or a bunch of trophies. I’ve never been first in my class and wasn’t in the running for valedictorian in either college or high school. I’ve never even been employee of the month.

Since I am an overachiever at heart I always see myself as a bit of a failure.

I have to remind myself on a regular basis that I am a functioning adult with a steady job, good credit scores, well adjusted kids, and a relationship in good standing. And then I go on to reassure myself that yes, this is enough. I don’t have to be the mother of the year or the star employee or anything other than myself.

When it comes to writing and publishing, I’m particularly hard on myself. It’s not enough to just be published – I want to be successful. And most days successful seems like a moving target I’m never going to hit. I’m not even sure what it means to be successful in publishing. How many books do I have to sell before I can call myself a success? What kind of advance do I need to get, how many loyal fans would need to line up at book signings for an autograph?

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is no number that would satisfy my thirst for perfection. But I have to try, right? And this means not just writing a perfect book, it means writing it in the perfect genre at the perfect time and submitting it to the perfect editor on the perfect day.

It also means I need to become a marketing expert.

Have you paid any attention to marketing lately? There is a staggering amount of advice out there. Different writers and marketing experts advocate for different approaches. Most insist that it is essential to do All The Things they recommend. If there was only one marketing guru out there this might work out okay, but there are hundreds, and they all have their very own You Must Do list.

If I live to be a hundred and spend all day every day pursuing All The Things recommended for novel marketing, I would still fail. This is a sobering thought, equivalent to the first of the twelve steps.

I, Kerry Schafer, acknowledge that I am powerless to do All The Things.

Last week this realization, combined with the challenge of simultaneously working on two projects with tight timelines while still putting in full time hours at the day job, knocked me on my butt. I felt very close to despair, in fact. Since I couldn’t possibly do All The Things, I actively chose to do None of the Things.

This did not serve to make me feel better.

And then I had a small epiphany. I’ve been working with a lovely deck of Self-Care cards designed by Cheryl Richardson. The other morning I drew this card:

I very nearly drew another card for the day. Independence is not something I struggle with. I do a lot of things on my own and tend to be outside of popular opinion a lot. But I turned it over to read the thought that goes with the picture:

I don’t like making decisions. What if I make the WRONG one? Because God knows that there is always a perfect decision and the whole world will probably fall apart if I fail to make the right choice. So the more I thought about this card, the more I felt like I’d been handed a gift.

What if making a choice were not a difficult and unwelcome task, but a right. A privilege. What if the right to choose applies to that impossible list of things to do for marketing?

Since then I’ve been looking at the lists of All The Things with a lot less anxiety and making selections based on personal comfort level, finances, and time. My choice might not be the one you would make, or that the marketing expert would make. It might not be the choice that will launch me into the circle of success, wherever that is.

But it makes a lot of sense and fits a certain trajectory: My life. My writing. My books. My career. My choices.

Maybe success or failure isn’t the point at all, in the end, in which case doing Some of The Things is more than enough.