Six ounces of my soul.

Just yesterday someone who was offering advice about marketing my book said to me, "You're going to have to step outside your comfort zone for some of this," and I almost went off the deep end. Not because of him, but because of me. He was an incredibly nice guy, taking a big chunk out of his day to help me, simply because a mutual friend had asked.

But I crossed the touchline of my comfort zone months ago. None of this feels normal to me, outside of actually writing a book. The publishing and marketing processes are strange, new territory for which there seems to exist no clear map. Or perhaps the problem is that there are too many maps.

So today I am pondering the difference between stepping outside one's comfort zone and outright violating one's core principles. A few days ago I posted a link to an article about how authors try to game the rating system on amazon.com. Yesterday I learned yet another technique toward this same end.

I have not decided yet whether it is something I will try. That creepy feeling has returned, and it was not helped at all by the fact that the gentleman who offered this advice also told me, "There are complete idiots who do this and make millions of dollars."

There's the problem. I'm not a complete idiot. I am many, many things. Too many, in fact. And perhaps more than anything else, I am a thinker. I think and think and think. I overthink, and then I think again. I examine a situation from the left, from the right and from all radians in between those 180 degrees.

I am, in short, an absolute mess.

At some point, I will have to decide whether I think this marketing scheme is simply a little bit farther outside my comfort zone or completely off my own, personal map.

I'll get back to you on that. For now, I have a lot of thinking to do.