Extroverted Introvert

I haven't posted on substack for a little while because the emotional work of the promotion of The Mercy Step hit me like a proverbial freight train.

It's hard to complain when the thing you always wanted happens, you get a book published and therefore you have to go out and promote it but it's still a shock to the system realizing just how much work the author is required to do; even with an agent, publisher and a PR company also working their socks off on your behalf.

A writer friend told me that no one, no matter how committed, will care about your book as much as you do and therefore, like it or not you'll have to roll up your sleeves and get to it. The difficulty in my case is that I don't have an ‘off’ switch.  There is always another social media post to be posted, another tiktok video to be made and edited another WhatsApp group to be stroked and tickled, and friends and relatives to be cajoled and coddled into buying the book, reading it and hopefully leaving lots of lovely reviews where other potential readers will find them.

Then there are the festivals and book signings. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love them. Unlike a lot of writers I thoroughly enjoy interacting with readers, booksellers, reviewers and the like. The problem at my end is that I am an extroverted introvert. By which I mean I love being out and about with people but I tire quickly and then have to retire to a darkened room to recover.

This is not a theoretical darkened room, this is an actual room in which I've fitted both curtains and blinds to achieve sufficient darkness, and in which I can listen to meditation tapes and try and still my beating heart and anxious mind.

That same sensitivity and empathy that enables me to write well (I hope) is also a thing that makes me feel too deeply in human interactions. 

I haven't quite got to the stage of waking up drenched in sweating the middle of the night suddenly remembering a deadline that has passed while I slept (I am a connoisseur of the afternoon nap, which serves to separate my mornings of writing with my evenings of teaching fitness classes), but it feels like it's only a matter of time. There have been a couple of interviews where I have appeared somewhat rushed and disheveled at my end of the zoom camera, pretending for all the world that I didn't almost forget. 

I'm not very good at cutting myself some slack and acknowledging that as a newbie author, you simply can't know everything, you're going to make lots and lots of mistakes. The only hope is that you can learn from them and not repeat them (too often). 

So if you're my friend, please I hope you can extend me a little patience. If you're a reader, do let me know what you think of The Mercy Step, and if you're a fellow novelist, please tell me how you cope with a never-ending set of demands both from yourself and others.

Marcia Hutchinson

The Mercy Step was published on 22.07.25