Headspace Studios.

Hey friends, it's Rosie.

Welcome back to Radio Headspace.

So let me tell you about the emotional roller coaster that was my second book proposal.

If you've never written a book proposal, here's the short version.

It's basically a business plan for your book.

You pour your heart, soul, research, and every ounce of creativity you can muster into 50 to 80 pages of

pitches, summaries, sample chapters, marketing plans, all to convince a publisher that your book

is worth investing in. Sounds fun, right? Now imagine doing that four times, because that's what happened with my second book.

I wrote one full proposal done, sent to my agent, Crickets.

I wrote a second, same thing.

I wrote a third, better, but still not it.

By the time I got to the fourth, I was exhausted.

I remember hitting the send email to my agent with the sinking feeling in my chest.

Here we go again, another fail, another reminder that maybe I'm not cut out for this.

And that's when it hit me.

This wasn't just disappointment.

This was fear.

It reminded me of how fear is described as one of our inner enemies.

It's not always loud or obvious.

Sometimes it shows up as that quiet, insistent voice in the back of your mind saying,

why bother? You've already failed. You're wasting your time. If you were really talented, this wouldn't be so hard, yada, yada, yada.

...