publishing a book and starting kindergarten

Hi! Woah. I leave for the East Coast to start my Make It Fast (please for the love of ME, pre-order it!!!) book tour in less than 48 hours. My literary agent just called to check in on my mental state and I’ll tell you what I told her— I’m honestly feeling great. I haven’t started packing, but I’ve got a million outfit options strewn about my closet, and I’ll get there eventually. The flights are booked and the hotel reservations are made. It’s go time, baby.

I’m also thrilled to announce that I have officially entered phase 5 of the creative process:

With my last book, I was firmly still in phase #4 (“I suck”) until the book had actually been published and all of you started to cook from it and share your photos and reviews and love of the book. But with Make It Fast, I hosted a party and gave the book to my friends and family two weeks before pub day! I created an Illegal Bookclub and roped in my friends all across the country to share advanced copies of the book with their communities! And, comically, Indigo (the main Canadian seller of the book) accidentally sent all of the pre-orders like two weeks early, so all of the Canadian What To Cookers out there have had their books for a week now! And Canadians are so nice — they are sending so much positivity my way!

So there are a LOT of people out in the world, people who I love and trust, who have already seen it, and cooked from it, and told me how much they love it. Thus launching me into phase #5 (“this might be ok”) a few weeks earlier than my last book publishing cycle.

I guess, if I’m being honest, what I’m saying is that I require external validation to feel good about my work? Is that pathetic? I don’t think so. I think it’s a real, honest part of most (all?) people’s creative process. It feels really scary and vulnerable to launch a piece of work that you’ve worked so hard on out into the world. It feels a little bit like dropping your deeply feeling, sensitive, absolutely incredible child off at Kindergarten for the first day of school. Will he make friends? Will the teachers understand how creative and kind and cool he is? Will they be patient with him and let him finish his art project because he really doesn’t like when he doesn’t get to finish his art project? Will the world love him as much as I do?

This analogy is not random: I am dropping my deeply feeling sensitive child off at Kindergarten for his first day of school tomorrow, and the jitters and unease of that feel so akin to publis