Introvert Hangovers
It's been a week since the official Gem & Dixie release month activities came to an end and I'm just about ready to stop sleeping fourteen hours a day. My mind is scattered, my mood is low, I can't stay on task as far as anything that I actually need to do, and the empty days seem huge and impossible yet I don't want to put anything in them.
In other words: introvert problems.
Most writers I know lean more to the I than the E on the Myers-Briggs scale, but when it's book release time--especially if you're doing events and travel for it--we've all got to reach for our most E selves. There's a lot of being on and being enthusiastic and trying to be a walking exclamation point so that everyone! feels excited! about buying your book!
Even if you do basically not much special for your book and go literally nowhere, there's a kind of emotional exposure that starts when advanced reader copies go out and peaks around release time. It uses energy, and by the end of it you can wind up feeling like one of those sun-bleached skeletons one occasionally stumbles upon in the desert.
And that's coming from a medium-popular author who only had like seven events! I cannot imagine touring for weeks or even months on end and being on for that extended period. I mean, when I write my future multimillion-dollar blockbuster, I WILL DO IT, because money heals many wounds and maybe buys you a beach house. Which would be a fantastic place to do introvert recovery.
Another thing that happens, whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, is this somewhat sudden withdrawal of attention. When you're riding high on a new project that's being met with enthusiasm, there's a lot of affirmation out there for you, and your ego gets to ride on the tide of (possibly hot) air of attention. Then it kind of stops, and it takes some time to get re-grounded in your daily life and the value you have for just being a person. One of my tour mates, Katie Cotugno, mentioned the phrase "adrenaline crash," and that also sounds right.
I'm giving myself approximately three more days of mopey, aimless butt-dragging before I institute ordinary-time routines and habits and human connection.
Meanwhile:
I rounded up some release-week links on my blog a couple of weeks ago, to which I now add this episode of First Draft Podcast featuring over an hour of me talking with host Sarah Enni about...everything; and also this podcast, a project of a high school and hosted by students, which I loved doing; and this piece about Gem & Dixie and sisterhood from Leila Roy; and, finally, I posted a sneak peek of the Story of a Girl movie on Instagram and plan to do more of that there as the air date (July 23! Lifetime!) gets closer.
And May I Recommend
This Guernica essay by Ayana Mathis on ambition and race and class and writing and what kinds of permission we give ourselves or are given by others and god it's just so good and I super relate please read it and then buy the anthology it's in.
This rec comes a few years after the fact but I finally saw the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, based on the Elizabeth Strout award-winning book, and it's soooo goooooood. Frances McDormand is everything. You can watch it if you have HBO Now or maybe find the DVDs somewhere...
If you're into screenwriting or learning about screenwriting, you can download Jane Anderson's Olive K script from the Emmys site. Such a good example of adaptation.
I ended up rewatching the movie Coraline a couple of times in the last few weeks, because while traveling it just seemed comforting and transporting in a way I needed. It holds up on multiple viewings and I find it just incredibly poignant and transporting and it somehow taps into my sense of wonder in a way that few things do now that I'm old and tired and cynical. It's streaming on Netflix. (I also recently listened to the audiobook, read by the author, Neil Gaiman...so great in a different way.)