THE HONEYMOON EFFECT by Liz Flaherty

THE HONEYMOON EFFECT
Liz Flaherty
http://www.lizflaherty.com/

Don’t you just love the honeymoon period?

You’ve already done the run around the kitchen table thing when you typed “The End,” saying yes, yes, YES before you gave much thought to how much you were going to miss the people you’ve been writing about. You’ve said “yes, thank you so much” quietly and with great dignity when a contract was offered, then run around the table again, shrieking this time. Yes, yes, YES. You’ve been through all the rounds of edits and no one has threatened anyone else with death or dismemberment, though there was that time when the copy editor got insistent about serial comas… You have, oh yes, yes, YES one more time, the most glorious cover ever and you get to show it around some. See here? you get to say on 101 guest blogs. Isn’t it just the coolest thing?

The book will be out…oh, soon, but for now, you can share an excerpt. Cut and paste the blurb. Say where you got the idea, what you’re working on now, how you celebrated your sale, what you’d be if you weren’t a writer.

You get to choose swag, wear ribbons that say you’re published, join with other writers who know “the secret.” Because there is one, you know. There must be. You’ve been hearing about “the secret” since the day you joined RWA or other large writers’ groups. Admittedly, published writers usually snickered when they talked about “the secret,” but surely…

Oh, the anticipation of waiting for the book to be out, to be available from the publisher, and on—oh, squee, Amazon! You know you make more money if people order from the publisher, but, really, Amazon! Yes, yes…what? Oh, you get it? I don’t have to say it again? Okay.

The great thing about the honeymoon period is that you get to have it with every single book. I’m as excited about my eighth book as I was the first one. Because they’re all different. THE GIRLS OF TONSIL LAKE is my first women’s fiction title. I loved writing it. Loved it! It will be out…soon.

And then…well, then the honeymoon will be over. What comes next is no less exciting, but it has different sides. It has what amounts to hanging the toilet paper wrong, squeezing toothpaste from the middle, and not being able to hit the hamper from six inches away. I mean, your book is in your hot little hands or, at the very least, your cover is up on Amazon and you’re a presence on Goodreads, but nothing’s really happening. There will be reviews, some worthy of another run around the kitchen table, some creating a cold hard place you have to work hard at melting down into experience. Your sales will be…well, what sales are, and you will have to work at promotion. At selling yourself when all you want to do is sit and write and interact with other writers on Facebook. People will ask when your next book will be out and you’ll have the cold, hard place again because you don’t know. You’re blocked. Your editor didn’t like your next story.

I love the marriage days of being published, the book-on-the-shelves and royalties-in-the-pocket part, even with all its attendant ups and downs, but sometimes—like before every book—it’s fun to be on the honeymoon.

Liz Flaherty
http://www.lizflaherty.com/