The Anxiety of Hitting "Publish" as a Self-Published Author

Let’s Talk About the Anxiety of Hitting Publish:

You spend months—maybe years—writing this thing. You pour every ounce of creative energy, every late-night spiral, every shred of hope into it.

You edit.

You obsess.

You second-guess everything from the character arc to the comma placement.

And then… it’s time.

Time to hit publish. Cue the panic.

The Fear is Real:

Self-publishing is a rush, but it’s also terrifying. There’s no team of experts double-checking your work. No marketing department to cushion the blow. It’s just you, your story, and a deep, nauseating fear that no one will care—or worse, that they will, and they’ll hate it.

What if it's a flop?

What if every review is 1 star?

What if I missed something huge, and people screenshot it and pass it around BookTok like a cautionary tale?

I think about that every day. And I still managed to hit publish.

How I Overcame My Anxiety:

The Shadows Within isn’t just a book. It’s my story, dressed up in fiction. It’s about a young man battling his own mind, questioning what’s real and what’s imagined, trying to hold onto love while his world unravels. It’s about fear. About survival. About the shadows we carry that no one else sees.

And yes—it’s also about anxiety. The kind that keeps you up at night and makes you doubt your own words. The kind I live with. The kind I wrote through.

This book came from a very personal place. Writing it was cathartic. Publishing it? Excruciating. But necessary. Because if even one person reads it and feels seen, it’s worth every moment of self-doubt.

So yeah, I’m scared. But I’m also proud.

The Shadows Within, Available May 1.

Shameless Plug:

The Shadows Within is now available for preorder wherever you get your ebooks.

Physical copies go on sale May 1. If you’ve been following my journey, I hope you’ll pick it up. And if you do—thank you. Truly.

Until next time, be brave enough to finish what you started. And kind enough to forgive the parts of you that are still scared.

— RW