New expectations

We had a wonderful time last night at the wedding but this morning I have awoken in a panic.  So many friends were supportive of my goal of producing a cookbook, with many of them already promising to buy a copy when it finally get released.  People laughed and talked about my plans and some even commented on this blog.  People who I didn’t even know were reading it.  But honestly, I have woken up this morning with a feeling of being overwhelmed.  It feels like I publicly promised to complete this project and today all I can see is all the work I have left to do!  I have kept my promise to myself to work on transcribing recipes every night.  I know this week my instruction manual from Amazon will arrive and I will have to start learning InDesign.  I want to send an email to my friend Lesley, a brilliant photographer who did our wedding photos, to see if she would shoot the cover for the cookbook. I have to think of a location to shoot, what props I will need, what food I have to prepare. Where do you hire models or should I use friends?  And I am thinking about copyrights, and ISBN numbers, and commercials I would like to shoot for YouTube to promote it, and creating a comprehensive list of newspapers and magazines in the US, Canada and the UK to which I can send press releases.  And what about advertising, what will I do?  How can I get any celebrity endorsements, is it worth it?  I don’t even know really how to write the publisher’s notes that accompany the product description on Amazon when the cookbook finally gets loaded for sale.  And then there is the publisher.  I am so nervous I will screw up the cover art and the book insides that when it is finally published it will be all cock-eyed.  See I am over-thinking right now, thinking of all the things to come even though I told myself to take it one step at a time.  I think somehow last night talking about it, and having acquaintances, friends and strangers already coming up to me and saying, hey, you are the one writing the cookbook, made me realize that it is taking on a life of its own and I almost have a responsibility to finish.  That it is bigger than me.  That it is already changing me, how others are defining me, and worse, what others and most importantly what I expect of me.  Ugh.