by Jay Hartman
Okay, here’s the thing about birthdays and celebrations. Either you really love them, or you come to loathe them. It depends on the individual.
I have a birthday in February. It’s not a milestone birthday (that happened three years ago) but suffice it to say that I have fewer years ahead of me than I do behind me. I’ve never made a big deal of my birthday. Usually a nice dinner with my husband and that’s about it for celebration. I’m autistic, so the idea of crowds of people around me, even for positive reasons, reduces me to rubble, not to mention having to be “on” and engage in conversation. It’s exhausting. I spend so much time avoiding celebrations and events I sometimes forget how important they can be to other people.
A great example of this is book or story awards. Honestly…I don’t believe in them. To me, there’s always a catch, always a sort of popularity contest, and some kind of rigged conclusion everyone saw coming. The people who don’t win often get pouty and vocal about how they should have won. People sign up for discussion groups and organizations only to win without contributing anything of value the other eleven months of the year when it isn’t nomination season. I believe if you think a book I published is of great value and merit, then you should preach it to the hills. I don’t need a flammable trophy, a piece of paper, or a plaque to tell me my author and their work is awesome. I wouldn’t have published it if I didn’t think it was amazing.
My thinking got a bit of a jolt recently from one of my authors who submitted her stories to an award panel. She asked if I’d submit my authors’ work. I told her I felt if the authors wanted to nominate their stories they certainly could and should, but it wasn’t something I wanted to do.
To her credit, she didn’t attempt to reach through the screen and bash me across the back of my head with a frying pan. She very patiently explained that although the awards don’t mean much to me, they could mean everything to an author. I’m passionate about my authors, taking care of them and ensuring they’re happy. Isn’t it a normal extension that I should submit stories on their behalf to further support what they hold in high value? And if they won, can I imagine the celebration they’d have?
So, yeah. I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t need to have someone else point it out to me, but part of being neurodivergent is the need to keep things a specific way. Change has a tendency to put me into a spiral. But she’s absolutely right. Although celebrations aren’t a big thing in my life, they are for others. I have to meet them halfway.
This got me thinking about other things I don’t celebrate. When Misti Media went live, I should have been gangbusters with positivity and bouncing off the walls. Instead, I treated it like another day at work. We published our charity work, something I’ve wanted to do forever, but I didn’t get as excited as I should have. Then our most recent anthology came out (the first in my White City Press imprint) so I should have been crazy excited. Yet I didn’t take the time to stop and celebrate the achievement. These aren’t small things. These are roaring successes in their own right and need championing.
Make sure you take time to celebrate your own successes. Maybe it’s meeting your word count or chapter goal for the day, seeing your book move up a few spots on a bestseller list. It could be a review from a person who discovered your work and is eager to devour more. Those people who tell you they are “your biggest fan”? Those are heady words that need a moment of positive reflection.
It’s also okay to celebrate your misses in addition to your hits. If you have a story that’s rejected but you received feedback on how to improve it, that’s a big win. You might have a release that is dead on arrival but you have people willing to be honest about what didn’t work. Maybe your work in progress should be shelved for six months because a better, more workable idea came into your head. These aren’t negative things. Remember, any crash you walk away from in one piece is a reason for celebration.
In the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris remarks to the camera “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” That goes for opportunities to celebrate as well.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to submit award applications on behalf of my authors. And maybe invite a few people over for birthday cake.
Looking to get The Publisher Perspective? Send your questions to jhartman@mistimedia.com with TPP in your subject line.
Jay A. Hartman, founder of Untreed Reads Publishing, promotes ebooks with an emphasis on independent authors and publishers. He’s written about the ebook industry for fifteen years and previously served as content editor for KnowBetter.com, one of the internet’s oldest sites reporting on ebooks and epublishing.
