The Space Between
Flash fiction writer, Keely O’Shaughnessy explores the space between acceptance and launch day for her flash fiction collection Baby Is A Thing Best Whispered.
Receiving an acceptance email is always a rush but receiving an acceptance for a flash fiction collection at midnight on a Sunday makes the experience even more dreamlike. My mum was visiting, and we’d stayed up late chatting when the email came in. Naturally, I reread it twenty or more times before allowing myself to celebrate. Mum seemed proud even though she didn’t fully understand what this meant, and maybe I didn’t either. This thing that I’d been working towards for years, the stories I’d poured everything into were going to be published and I was balancing on the edge of something new. Up until this point, I had a firm grasp of the process and the objective. In terms of writing, editing, and submitting, I roughly knew what to expect yet when it came to having a book out in the world I was daunted.
In the writing community, we talk a lot about getting published. That’s the goal. Create something, edit it, proofread it, write a synopsis, and query letter or proposal, but there’s little discussion about what to do once a book is set for publication.
Most small indie presses do not have the budget for marketing. I knew this much, but I wasn’t prepared for how all consuming, exhausting, and at times isolating, being a one-woman marketing team could be.
Armed only with knowledge that I’d gleaned from fellow authors, more seasoned than myself, I reached out to book bloggers and magazines that might’ve been interested in reviewing my collection. I’d been advised that a strong book blog tour was the way to go. I attached advance reader copies, drafted emails, and took slow even breaths before pressing send… Mercifully, I got some positive responses. Thanks to a bunch of kind and supportive souls in the writing community (including Dialect), I managed to coordinate an eight-day blog tour. I was chuffed.
After the tour, I made some headway with promotion. I’d created an extensive spreadsheet that listed those I wanted to contact, had contacted, their reply, along with what I needed to do next. I coloured the positive leads green. This may seem like an unimportant detail, but this spreadsheet proved to be invaluable for keeping track of interviews, reviews, mentions, and helping me keep up. Before launch day, I had twenty-two highlighted promotion opportunities, which was great yet overwhelming. With each interview question or podcast chat I could feel my energy stores depleting. I love discussing writing and my stories, but the promotion side of writing calls for a lot. Answering the same question, a myriad of different ways to sustain interest, worrying about whether me or my writing sounds thought-provoking enough. Whether it will pique readers curiosity. Whether I was ticking the correct marketing boxes.
It’s this fear that we don’t talk about enough, the self-doubt, and the energy it takes to keep it at bay. The energy it takes to forge on with self-promotion despite the feeling you are treading water or boring people with repetitive cries of please read my book. All the while unsure if this effort will even impact your book’s reach.
At times in the run up to, and after the collection’s launch, I was swept away by the pressure that comes with self-promotion, its relentlessness: the trepidation that allowing the pace to slow would be detrimental to the book and mark me out as a failure.
So, is it worth it?
As time barrels towards November, Baby is a Thing Best Whispered has been out for over two months and I say yes. Knowing that people have read my collection and that it’s sat on bookshelves in people’s homes gives me a huge sense of accomplishment. I have achieved a long-term writing goal. I’m proud, but I need to remind myself to hold onto that feeling.
It’s easy to fixate on numbers. Reviews —good and bad— sales or lack of. It’s easy to become trapped in the churning momentum of selling books when you should be applauding the milestone that is publishing something in the first place. Since publishing my collection, I’ve felt both worn down and elated, and both are valid responses, but midst it all I’ve come to understand how important it is to carve out some space to sit with what you’ve achieved and celebrate it.
Embracing the good: Keely celebrating her collection, with friends and family, at her book launch held at Stroud Subscription Rooms.
Check out Keely’s blog tour below.
You can read Ellie Jacobson’s review in Flint and Steel here
Read more about Keely and her collection in this interview at Master’s Review with author Austin Ross.
Read Mandira Pattnaik’s spotlight on Keely’s collection and a craft article on how to write circular stories.
Read the review by Briefly Write.
Read the Selcouth Station Press review.
Read the review by Emma McEvoy.
KEELY O’SHAUGHNESSY is a writer with Cerebral Palsy, who lives in Gloucestershire. Her micro-chapbook, The Swell of Seafoam, was published as part of Ghost City Press’ Summer Series 2022 and her debut collection, Baby is a Thing Best Whispered is published with Alien Buddha Press (2022). Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions as well as the Wigleaf Top 50. She is Managing Editor at Flash Fiction Magazine.
Find her at keelyoshaughnessy.com or Twitter: @KeelyO_writer
