The fear and excitement of taking the initial step – sharing your writing with friends, family, editors and agents – is huge, but once taken, it seems as though the worst is over. That’s it. You’ve exposed your soft underbelly like a nervous puppy meeting bigger dogs for the first time.

That complacency is, of course, misplaced; it is a delusion created by wishful thinking like so many things in life. The point when you actually release your first novel onto the world-at-large is much, much worse.

Is it good enough? Should I have read through it again just one last time? If it isn’t good enough, will I have the resilience to keep on trying to write? If it is good enough, will I be able to market it and build awareness?

Well, there comes a point when it’s too late and you press the red button, throw caution to the wind and leap off the cliff edge; the book is published and it is time for the fates to decide what happens next. The moment of first holding the paperback version between your fingers is a wonderful, fleeting thrill, but then the real journey begins.

You start by telling everyone you know about it, many reply quickly saying that they will buy it and, of course, give it a review. From others, there is silence.

Does that mean that they are waiting to read it before they reply? Did the email go into their spam folder? Will the ones who replied actually read it?

At moments like these, time often has a special and unique viscosity. At one point, I found myself frustrated that I hadn’t yet had any feedback until I realised that it was only two days since I had told people the book was available. I needed to get a grip on reality, but it was impossible.

After two weeks, I have now reduced the number of times I check all available reports for sales and reviews to twenty or thirty times a day (much less than before), the feedback and reviews have started to come in – all very positive so far – and I have started to allow myself to believe that the book might be good enough. That I might be able to do this writing thing.

Dangerous thoughts.