This Halloween season you might be in the mood for something scary.
I’ve got just the thing.
Friend, if you’re looking for a frightful way to re-encounter those spine-chilling phantasms of your own inadequacies… if you’d like to visit a haunted house of spooky self-doubt…
If you’d love a jump-scare constructed of your own incompetence, or if you’d like your own appalling insecurities to haunt you like the ghosts of embarrassments past…
Let me recommend the haunted hay ride of being an author.
Yes, my fright-loving friends… there are few scarier attractions at this terrifying theme park called life than publicly exposing the words of your heart to the critiques and judgements of anyone in the world who is wiling to spend $19.99 on a paperback copy of your brains.
Maybe I’m being a bit dramatic. Maybe I’ve coated my face in costume makeup and inserted plastic fangs into my mouth to seasonally exaggerate my point. But here’s a truth I’m feeling right now: GETTING A BOOK PUBLISHED IS TERRIFYING.
But there’s a really big and really important reason so many people love this Halloween season… sharing scary, vulnerable, raw things with each other brings us closer together.
And there’s a really big and really important reason so many people consider death up close during El Día de Los Muertos and All Saints Day this time of year… we have so few days on earth, we might as well remember to live them fully.
And so I celebrate this season of fear and death by sharing with you all, vulnerably, frightfully, shakingly… three of the ways publishing a book really scares me — three of my deepest insecurities as I prepare to release this book.
INSECURITY #1: I wrote a book full of stories and I’m haunted by a feeling that I’m a bad storyteller.
I never considered myself a good storyteller. Still don’t, to be honest.
I’ve overconfidently started too many stories at crowded parties and bars that each had a strong beginning, flailed into a confusing middle, and sputtered out with no real end… just a pathetic fade resulting in polite smiles and confused looks from listeners.
So writing a whole book full of real stories from my life was… laughable to be honest. It took me teaching myself a new way to write and think. It took some deep dives into the recesses of my memory (occasionally into cobweb-filled cellars of my memory). It took continually reminding myself that my stories were worth sharing (for someone out there) to get them down on paper.
I’m proud of myself for doing it. I’m proud of the stories I shared. They’re my stories. They’re true. They’re real.
INSECURITY #2: I’m eerily unqualified, uncredentialed, and unimpressive.
To a massive swath of the world filled with people seeking perfect gurus, mighty authority figures, flawlessly studied experts, undefeated debaters, officially ordained holy men, and dictatorial leaders, I’ll be a huge disappointment.
My approach in this book is not prescriptive. I don’t offer a cure for all that ails you or a salvation promise. On the page, my voice sometimes cracks and my uncertainty is unhidden. I don’t wave my diplomas and degrees or titles on a flagpole that demands your salutes.
I’ve written this book as just a friend sharing a sacred conversation with you, the reader, over a cup of coffee.
That won’t be enough for some readers. I get it. I won’t be enough for some readers.
Shrug. Smile.
INSECURITY #3: My perspective lacks high drama and gory trauma.
My life hasn’t been amazing enough or horrible enough or cool enough to warrant your attention. I’m sorry I don’t have the worst tragedy to share.
Actually, no. I’m not sorry about that. I’m grateful for my life. The ups and downs. The hard parts and the high parts. Deeply grateful. But it hasn’t been one that will automatically sell books.
What I wrote in this book is not filled with sex, lies, and videotapes. I’m not writing from the wild extremes or the unbelievable edges. Sometimes I feel like my humble tome doesn’t deserve space on your bookshelf.
I’m not famous. I’m not a verified influencer. I’m not on the news. I’m not cool. I’m not edgy. I’m just me.
I’m just me. I hope that’s enough.
And you’re just you. I know that’s enough.
Edgar Allan Poe once wrote (presumably with a one-eyed raven perched upon on his shoulder amidst the gloom of a thick, dark night), “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
The exquisite, ordinary, and hopefully relatable horror of my reality is scrawled across the pages of this book, Cathedrals of Connection. I offer it to you timidly and while nervously startled by my own haunting insecurities. I hope you’ll receive it gently while likely haunted by your own.
(If you read this whole thing… you’re probably the kind of person who already pre-ordered the book. Thank you.)
There's nothing like it. Thanks for sharing this, Matt.