This article was originally adapted from a podcast, which you can check out here.
It has been two years since my first book, Deep Learning Illustrated, was published. The years I spent writing the book were filled with persistent darkness and anxiety.
I had a sense of dread that when readers got their hands on the book, they would find catastrophic errors or humiliating gaps in my writing. I feared that some unidentified issue or collection of issues with the book would be so massive that the book would be perceived as a joke or that I would be perceived as a fraud. (I've learned since that such fears are common amongst authors, particularly whilst penning their first book.)
In the latter part of the writing, my anxiety was multiplied by the reality that I'd passed the manuscript submission deadline that I contractually agreed to with the publisher, Pearson. (It turns out late submissions are common and so the publisher was not only unsurprised by the lateness, but also not stressed about it. Ok, one huge sigh of relief.)
Once the manuscript was submitted, I steeled myself with a growth mindset that even if the book does turn out to be an abject flop, I would work as objectively as I could with the critical feedback so that I could iterate and improve for a second book. I believed that, no matter how poor my first book is or even my second or third book is, that if I was committed to the process of writing and iterative improvement, my tenth book would inevitably be at least not bad.
When my book was released and became an instant #1-bestseller in several Amazon categories in the US, I was surprised and absolutely delighted. I can still scarcely believe it. Today on Amazon, the book has a 4.5-star rating from hundreds of reviews. Six international translations have been released and some of those have themselves done well, such as the Traditional Chinese version that was released last month and itself became a #1-bestseller in Taiwan.
I’m telling you this today because I've seen several recent LinkedIn posts from content creators and others making strides on a new challenge who have felt overwhelmed by anxiety. Hopefully this episode illustrates that the way you feel about your own work — particularly prior to publishing — can be vastly disconnected from reality. I’m starting to get the impression that it is normal to feel overwhelmed by anxiety anytime that you’re creating something for public consumption. Hopefully if you’ve been going through something similar yourself, hearing this will bring comfort — maybe even a tiny reduction in anxiety.
Keep going. Whether it's prose or code, keep publishing. If in the end, one piece of content doesn't hit the mark as you anticipated, appreciate that not every negative piece of feedback is accurate while the feedback that is accurate can be leveraged to iterate objectively and improve. What matters most is that you keep going.