My next book comes out in LESS THAN THREE WEEKS and as part of an effort to reduce stress, I spent Sunday evening reading the gazillion industry newsletters that I let pile up until I feel like I’m failing as an author and am so stressed that all I want to do is watch Me Before You (HIGHLY RECOMMEND).

*takes a breath*

I have two gmail accounts—one personal and one business—and I try to keep most of the writing-related newsletters in the business account so they don’t mingle with my New York Times daily emails (I’m somehow on two lists—I unsubscribed to one, then promptly resubscribed because I like feeling informed once a week when I catch up on them), the store accounts that email every day (even though I keep resetting those to once a week), and the occasional ACTUAL IMPORTANT EMAIL that makes its way into my inbox. But somehow a few sneak over and I end up wading through two accounts with backlogged emails.

Is my long-windedness making you feel anxious yet? Okay, good. We’re on the same page.

I can hear you murmuring to yourself, “Hit unsubscribe, Hoo.” But it’s not that easy. I’ve weaned myself down to a handful of lists and they all have REALLY GOOD ADVICE (those are three different lists if you’re at all curious)—and another because I LOVE HER—and every time I read the posts, I feel one step closer to having a grip on this whole indie publishing thing. Except sometimes I slip over the edge of too much information and fall into the well of overwhelmedness and panic that I’ll never figure this all out and wonder if things will ever go back to when you could run a Facebook ad and that would be enough. (Answer: it won’t.)

Side note: have I mentioned I have anxiety? This is pretty much how my brain works always. (My SEO plugin is telling me that the readability for this post “Needs improvement.” Tell me about it.)

So what do I do? When I start to get overwhelmed, I remind myself that I can only control what I can control, and while yes, I’d love to also have audiobooks and run ads all over the internet and become a place to lift up other authors (oh hey, I’m doing that), I cannot do it all. And the most important thing of all—at least this week—is to focus on publishing my book and making sure I meet the deadlines I’ve committed to. Write a press release. Submit the posters for my book launch to area schools. Load the print book to my worldwide distributor (almost forgot that one, d’oh!).

This week I have nine author interviews and guest posts to write for an upcoming blog tour. And I still have to write the bonus scenes from Xavier’s perspective. And set up Facebook ads and teaser images and decide which lines form the book will best entice readers to buy the book. (If you’ve read the book and have suggestions, I’m all ears.)

And the thing that gets me through all of this is knowing that come November, it’s back to writing.

By the way, bonus points if you noticed the photo above isn’t my email. That was what I had on my screen when I decided to take the picture (since I didn’t want to share my emails)—it’s how many hits I’ve had on my blog for the YA Scavenger Hunt! See, marketing works! *falls over*