This is a guest post from my friend, Patrick Combs.

Patrick Combs. He was one of those chance encounters that changed the course of our lives. Walt had crossed paths with him on Facebook, bought an extra conference ticket from him, and off the relationship went, down the strangest road. 

From Patrick we learned what it meant to be a courageous, creative entrepreneur. To say yes long before you’re ever ready. To have fun and trust in the process, even when your knees are knocking, which they do a lot of the times. 

When I think of Patrick, I think of seeing him in a one-man show in some dark Manhattan neighborhood. Of jumping into his friend’s car after the show and heading off to God knows where, hanging out into the late hours at some odd little restaurant with an assortment of fascinating people. How did that happen?!

Not long ago, Patrick, who has enjoyed a good deal of success, shared his goal: to become a nobody. 

God, I loved that. For someone who recognizes that ego is the enemy, that right there is gold.

Anyway, here’s his piece:

 

R.I.P. my book Major in Success. (May 1995- November 2018)

(this is story about overcoming self-doubt… especially for writers, artists and creators)

My book was born in May of 1995. It was my first born book and therefore holds a special place in my heart. I was a 26 year old first time author. I was daring but insecure, barely capable of believing in my own words as I wrote them. I birthed the book with great hope and greater self doubt.

The book was an absolute sales failure out of the gate. Even on a small initial print run of only 2500 copies. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Barnes and Noble ordered 1,000 copies! I was ecstatic. But for how high it made me feel, the fall was even harder. My next publishing statement would reflect that Barnes and Noble had returned 800 copies because they didn’t sell fast enough. That’s when my new book felt like a total failure.

But it was my child, and I traveled the country speaking and giving my book a chance to be bought and read after every talk I gave. And along the way, something astounding happened….

It won a NY Public Library Best Book Award (Gulp!). And far more importantly, it ended up in the hands of at least a quarter million students. For 23 years, it remained in stores, in libraries, in college courses, and in new hands, helping readers find their way to a career based on their passion.

I grew up in a town on 14,000. The thought of several hundred thousand reading my book is still quite incomprehensible to me as I still have in me visceral memories of the low self-confidence I had to overcome to write it.

I’ve been getting royalty checks for my book for almost two decades now. Last month I got another, but there was no check inside. My statement said in the past six months, I had sold “-16” copies of Major In Success. Ha! Maybe now I owe my publisher! But in seriousness, it seems my first book has completed its usefulness. R.I.P.

I found a beautiful story by celebrated author John Updike years and years ago. I saved it, it seems for today… It is undoubtedly the most truthful and beautiful thing I’ve ever seen said about being an author.

John Updike is doing his duty at a church book fair, standing amid table after table of used books… He says,

A few of my own yellowing titles crop up among them; their purchasers, startled to find me alive and standing there, ask me to sign them, and thus I touch for a moment, as they surge toward me and then away again, battered copies of Couples, rubbed and rain-damaged Rabbits, and foxed, dog-eared Witches of Eastwicks, the diabolic purple I chose for the cover cloth faded by the passing years to an innocent mauve.

These books of mine have been through the mill. They have traveled in the ill-mapped wilderness of the reading public. Their scars of use shame me. While I cowered unseen, these books bravely ventured forth and took their chances.

I am so deeply grateful for the thousands of times my book Major In Success took its chances to change someone’s life when I was not around. I’m so deeply grateful for the impulse that came through me to write it.