You're stuck. I'm stuck. Let's all stick together to get unstuck.
A "do as I say, not as I do" post on writer's block, editor's paralysis, and what makes smart people get stuck with deep work. (TL DR: the way to unstick is probably to stop caring about it so much.)
Just about everyone in publishing is hella stuck right now.
Authors’ manuscripts are coming in months after deadline. Editors’ edits to said manuscripts are taking forever: months to an entire year, in one client’s memorable case. Contracts are taking forever. Email responses: taking forever.
It’s a mess.
One after another, pretty much everyone in our industry has been spinning out with shame, guilt, and anxiety in 2021, leading to workflow paralysis. This is The Era of Great Stuckness in book publishing, and good Lord, am I right in there in it, too.
Vulnerable sharing time: for going on two years, I have felt so far behind on my deep-thought developmental editing for clients that I’ve remained in a state of low-grade panic pretty much every moment I am awake.
(I wish I were exaggerating. We started Neon in late 2019, so new business stress segued right on into pandemic stress.)
The Bad Hormones have now been sloshing around inside me for so long that we’re now firmly in The Body Keeps the Score territory with the random huge bruises and the fatigue and the minor cold that lasts a week and a half, etc.
I hate this. My stress isn’t just affecting my health; it’s also irrational. If I were one of my own clients, I would scream at me: you know that in book publishing, editorial slowness is fine from a business-outcomes perspective; it just feels terrible. I’d scream: you know that Team Neon is crushing it. I’d scream: for fuck’s sake, you have had by far the best sales year of your career in 2021. BY FAR!!! Why are you so stressed out!
Were I to scream this, however, the only part that would respond from the depths of my subconscious is my ego ogre, a.k.a. the inner bridge troll that feels compelled to spout defensive career brags immediately after I share anything vulnerable in public.
Can you relate? Going to go ahead and guess you can, because—sob—U R MY PEOPLE.
So let’s talk about why we’re here.
In life, we get stuck when we enter shifting terrain without proper equipment for maintaining traction in said shifting terrain.
That is why so many of us are feeling stuck now: we didn’t come to This Horrible Time prepared with the right equipment. And now we’re learning why the right equipment is so important, aren’t we. Useful lesson! Horrible, horrible, horrible useful lesson. Barf.
You can’t just drive your Park Slope Mommy Prius onto a beach; you need a Jeep with four-wheel drive and deflated tires, or you’re going to get stuck. Ditto snow chains in a blizzard and snowshoes on a….snow hill or whatever. If you don’t bring the right equipment with you, you’re gonna get stuck.
The same is true for work habits in 2021. You can’t take the commuter sedan of your past expectations and coping skills and just have at it on the nightmare tundra of the now.
Why is this still so hard for us all to learn?! We’re not only all stuck here on the snowdrift, we’re crashing into each other, totaling each other’s sanity in our flailing attempts to escape back to familiar paved roadways.
What we need is not to crash into each other anymore. WE NEED TO CALL A TOW TRUCK, PEOPLE. Or just get together and start pushing each other out one at a time. But the former is easier for those of us who are lazy.
Realizing the above is what motivated me to finally listen to my therapist and hire an executive coach last month.
I’ve been working with the incredible Elizabeth Su on the why and how of my stuckness and the practical organization of my work time. The conversations we’ve had so far have been revelatory.
I’m going to share some of the lightbulb moments Elizabeth has helped me to uncover here in hopes they will help you, too. I’m getting a little less unstuck, FINALLY, and I’d love to help push you forth from this tundra. You should also think about just hiring Elizabeth yourself!
Here goes: