One of my favorite reactions to the publication of Proud But Never Satisfied* was from his brilliance Arthur Daemmrich who acknowledged the strangeness of how quiet the world becomes after one’s book is released: “You put a ton of work into a book and then the first response is silence. It takes months for reviews and for feedback and for people to notice it is out there!“
Actually, we’ve been blessed by good reviews so far, thanks to gracious pre-readers; but, in many ways, Daemmrich was spot-on. The distance between writing and publishing is vast. In spite of knowing where you were headed the whole time, reaching the destination is strangely unexpected. It’s like getting out of a car you’ve been driving hard for (in my case) three straight years–long enough to no longer notice the sonorous hum of the highway–then there’s just a deafening silence.
All of the sudden, you’re even not in the vehicle… and that’s when you hear how loud it all was… by not hearing it at all anymore.
Indeed, it feels like I’ve moved to a vacuous planet uninhabited by the infrasound of writing a book… the constant conversation, the noisy notepad near my pillow, and the back&forthing with my sources, my clients, the editors, designers, publishers, and my own inner-circle of trusted advisers whose job is just to get the pour right on a G&T at the end of deadline-driven week.
Nature and my CPA abhor a vacuum, so I’m happy to be back at work on another book commission. Still, I wish I had the courage to hang-out in that silence until I could hear the sound of my voice.
Seaver Creative 