In the midst of all the freaking out about whether my book will be a success or whether I’ll ever finish a novel or sell another book again, I often lose sight of the fact that I wrote a book. A really good book. A book I’m extremely proud of.

I have many advance copies of the book in my apartment now, and when I have a party I like to take them down and show them to people. On Saturday, I saw a friend sit down and get 25 pages into the book right there while the party went on around her.

The book is good. Sometimes it feels like a miracle that I managed to write it. But it’s real and honest and a lot of fun, and the entire world is going to get access to it in just nine months!

And if I focus too much on my risks and fears then I’ll lose sight of how magical that really is.

It’s hard. It’s coming up on three years since I wrote the first draft of this book. I haven’t even touched the text in six months. The book feels very removed from me, in some ways. But it’s not. I wrote it. And even now to this day I’m very proud of it.

I don’t know whether the book will be a success, but sometimes I forget that beneath all the marketing and hype and everything like that, you’ve got the book itself. And the book can only succeed if people truly enjoy it and feel like they’re reading something interesting and new. Even when books feel like they fly under the radar (as with my latest fave YA novel, Susan Juby’s THE TRUTH COMMISSION), that doesn’t mean they failed. Sometimes it just means they had a slow burn (I’ve since recommended it to several friends who’ve read it and recommended it, in turn, to their friends).

I certainly think my book is capable of being loved, and when I step beyond all the hype and agony, I do feel a quiet confidence. The book is its own best marketing.