Thank you for listening to Owning It. If you would like to support the series, the best thing you can do is just tell a friend or better yet share it on social media. If you really, really want to support, you can subscribe to me on Substack where I write a weekly column. Listeners of the pod get a 20% discount forever at carolinephorun.substack.com. Thank you.

Hello, dear listener and welcome back to owning it the anxiety

podcast with me, your host and author Caroline Forin. This week, I'm just pressing pause on the expert

interviews because my book is coming out this week. It is officially launched week. And I just

wanted to take a moment to reflect on that. I suppose

something that has come up in a lot of interviews is where I am now and how my anxiety is these days.

So this will just be a solo episode with me and grab a cup of tea or head out for a walk and join me.

I suppose to start, I'm sitting here as the book is reaching shops and hitting shelves and

I'm feeling anxious, but it feels like a very expected and reasonable anxiety to be putting something out into the world that is so much of yourself.

I think as a creative person, any creative person will know the feeling that it just feels very vulnerable

to do that, even though I'm so used to sharing and being open, it's tricky to put something

out into the world and risk, I guess, the rejection, risk the criticism, risk just the fact that things might not go as well as you'd

hoped or you'd plant. And I think one really hard thing about writing books and the nature of

book publicity and the book world is having a book that's really well written and a really strong,

solid concept is really only

one tiny part of the equation. So much of a book success comes down to who you know, just it landing

on the right desks, it getting into the right hands, people backing you, being willing to support you and maybe there's

nothing in it for them. There's so much that goes into a book doing well that weighs, I think,

more than the quality of the book itself. So like, I'm not worried about, I'm not wondering,

oh my God, I'm about share this book like, is it any good?

I feel really, really strongly that it is. And I've had really good feedback from

clinical psychologists and various experts. And that means so much to me. And I know, I know,

...