Publishing is sometimes a very scary, very lonely place. You have to make decisions based on your head and not your heart. In fact, a lot of steps that are taken in publishing have to remove your heart from the equation all together. At least, that’s the way I go about my business transactions (and yes, writing for publication is a business) from submissions to conventions to emails to … well, anything.

Sure I can let my guard down around my friends where we’re talking turkey (and I do) but for the most part, any “business decision” I make in regards to how I deal with people who are publishing my books, my heart isn’t a part of it. Maybe it’s a cooping mechanism. Maybe its simply a way to protect myself. I don’t make any decision regarding anything to do with the publication of my books lightly.

Each decision I make has usually been carefully  worked out (usually, obsessively so–much to my husband’s chagrin because he takes the brunt of me talking and talking and talking about it. Which he does beautifully BTW). Mostly because I need to make sure the decision is right for me. It’s a step in the direction that I want to go. Not everyone does (or will) agree with decisions I’ve made (or will make), however, they aren’t behind my keyboard making those decisions. It’s easy to talk about what you would have done in the situation, but here’s the thing…it’s not your decision.

I don’t know where I’ll be in five years in terms of my writing career. Hell, I don’t know where I’ll be by the end of this year. At this point, I don’t have a “plan” that is so far reaching. Maybe I need one…

I do make a yearly goals plan. Problem is, I usually set my yearly goals so pathetically low, I have no problem beating them at all. Maybe that too is a protective mechanism. Set goals I know I can make. Can’t possibly be setting myself up for failure that way, right? Which is…wrong. By handling my goals this way, I am setting myself up for failure.

Where am I going with this? I’ve been mulling over one of those business decisions I was talking about and realized I was leaving my heart in the equation even though I said I don’t. It was a decision I was attached to in my heart, even though my head was telling me to get on with it. Its a decision which affects my yearly goals. Timely, as I’m quickly approaching the time in which I set my 2014 goals (in August).

I took the plunge this morning. Hopefully, it will be an easy and painless process for everyone involved (including readers). But this is, once again, a reminder of just how big, bad and scary this world of publishing is.