The Nature of the Beast

You know, I used to think that getting a book written was essentially doing battle with the Beast.  The agony of suckage and rewriting, the ecstasy of some brief stroke of genius, the back-and-forth and rest and retrial - all of it an epic struggle, yes?

Nope.  Come to find out that all of this, the writing and rewriting and feedbacking and editing?  That was just the training montage.  Eye of the Tiger, and so forth.  The Beast is actually called Publicizing - pitching, querying, networking, marketing, social-media-whatevering, please-look-at-my-stuffening - and it's licking its chops waiting for me.

On second thought, maybe I need to practice a little more with the backswing.

So it's come to this, has it? A fight to the death, mano a mano, man to man... just you and me and my... GUARDS!