Butterflies in the stomach. My publisher is sending out what they call the Mondo Press Kits with advance review copies of my book, cupcake magnets and marketing material to about 60 people today, including THE Seth Godin, who not only has stopped by this blog a couple of times but who also contributed to the book and is generally an awesome, authentic guy.

It’s amazing that bestselling authors like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan and Dan Pink plus 57 more people will soon hold my work in their hands, and more amazing that they even agreed to review it.

But it’s that word that’s killing me: review. They are going to judge the book by its cover, its contents, its layout — everything. They’re going to catch typos (we spelled “charitable” wrong on Seth Godin’s page, and he caught it in the screenshot. Horrors!), examine my headshot (why is she with a piggy bank and a cupcake?), question my choice of tools…. whatever. Or they may flip through in a second, find it uninteresting and ignore it.

For whatever reason, I chose two professions with major exposure… author and speaker. An author prints thousands of copies of his heart and soul and spreads it around the world, completely open to criticism and perhaps praise. And a speaker puts herself on display in front of dozens or hundreds or thousands, has the job of entertaining people for an hour or so, then frequently gets immediate feedback in the form of evaluations about how she did. In both cases, there’s no shrinking away from how people feel about you. You’re putting yourself out there for them to tell you.

When I worked at McDonald’s in high school, the only person who really criticized your work was your manager during a quarterly review. I remember one time they said I was really good with the French fry machine but my uniform was too dingy so I wouldn’t get the full 15-cent raise I was due. I went home crying, and I started drycleaning my polyester uniform once every two weeks to keep it more spiffy. I ended up winning an award for my French fry prowess, but I still worried about the uniform.

After a presentation when I get my evaluations, I frequently read comments like, “Bring Beth back!” and “Most practical session I’ve been to in years!” But there’s always someone who writes something like, “Nice chick, but she talks about her ex-boyfriends too much” or “Session wasn’t what I expected.” And instead of focusing on the good stuff, I read and re-read the bad — obsess over them, even.

So now the books are out of my hands, and I’m inviting true scrutiny. There’s a chance that I won’t get unending praise from all 60 people. But perhaps a few people may really like the book, and a couple of people won’t. I have to remember to look at the big picture and not get hung up on a couple of bad reviews. And I also have to remember that Seth and Brian and Dan and the other 57 people are not judging me… they’re judging a book. And I am much more than this one book.

Ever feel like your life will *really* get started if X happens? For me the X factor is the purchase of an area rug.

Let me explain. A couple of months ago I decided to give up my ocean-view office to move my headquarters into the house. Originally I had moved into a real office to increase my productivity. The off-site office worked wonderfully for a while until I figured out how to find as many distractions there as I did at home. So I decided to save myself a few hundred dollars a month and revamp my home office.

Our poor home office has undergone several changes in the last few years. When I moved in to D.J.’s house, he let me take it over, and I rearranged his big, wooden lawyer furniture to give it a little softer look. Then when I moved out, we moved in a twin bed for a while to accommodate extra company. Then D.J. sold his practice to a larger firm and took the office back over. But he didn’t really use it, so here I am again.

I have big dreams for this room that I sit in for 8-10 hours a day. I have a glorious blank wall to play with, and an unlimited imagination about things I can do. But so far all I’ve done is move one of the big, heavy desks to another side of the room and put up some gauzy orange curtains I’ve had for years.

In my mind, all I need to really make this room into *my* office is to find the perfect area rug. Something bright and cheery with flowers, or maybe a coffee cup, or perhaps even a cupcake! Yes! And once I find this rug, it’ll help me decorate the big, blank wall. It’ll help me determine what cute desk accessories would look best. It’ll make me feel at home.

So sometimes I get lost rug shopping. I can easily spend an hour or two searching Overstock.com or craigslist. I just get obsessed about finding THE PERFECT RUG that will ignite the completion of the office. Sometimes I find a rug that will probably do… but then I dismiss it because it has one too many flowers, or I flinch at the price (a perfect rug should cost about $25, right? Sigh). So I never buy my rug, and I sit in this office that I don’t consider fully formed.

To me this is a metaphor for other decisions in our lives. How many times have you told yourself that as soon as you lose a little weight you’ll really go out there and meet someone new? Or maybe you think all you need is to take the time to REALLY write a good resume, and then you’ll go after that great job. We sit around waiting for some little thing to happen to transform our lives (or our offices) into something more than it is. And in the meantime, life (and work) keep happening.

I know I’m not the first one to write on this subject — probably not even the one millionth one — but I think I need to look around me and accept this office as my own and get on with my life/career.

So, what’s your area rug?

For the last 8 months or so, I have been a member of a networking group. Every week we’d meet for breakfast and tell each other about our companies and what kinds of clients we were looking for. Then we’d exchange business leads, share announcements and generally exchange witty banter for 90 minutes.

Membership fees are good for a year, but because of a change I made in my membership category, my remaining credits wouldn’t transfer, and I decided to leave the group instead of paying for another full year (plus another application fee! Really, people? Come on.). I had recently assumed a leadership position with the group, and I loved the social interaction, business connections and dang it all — just the people in general (we writers don’t get out much, you know).

The end of my tenure happened very quickly, and when the group found out that I wouldn’t get my remaining credits, “SAVE BETH” emails started to fly. (They wanted to start a fund to help pay for my new dues so I could stay with the group. I was incredibly flattered, but I respectfully declined their charity.) Many people wrote to say, “The group won’t be the same without you!”

I realize it’s taking me 200+ words to come to some kind of point for this blog, but here it goes… even though I felt the love from my group, now that I’m gone, I’m gone. In order to really reap the benefits of networking groups, social media, blog presence — anything in this time of micro-attention spans and constant bombardment, you have to be present. You have to give more than you take, participate regularly and stay front and center with the people who can make a difference to your business. Sure, members may mention my name for another meeting or two, and they want me to attend the holiday party, but by the time the new year rolls around, I’ll be just one of the many who has come and gone from the group.

Being present is a challenge for anyone who relies on reputation and presence to make a living. How can you be present everywhere, all the time? I’ve let my Twitter stream trickle to a few drops a month. My blogs have cobwebs. I pay $30 a month for an email service I haven’t used since the summer. When I try to be present everywhere, I end up getting overwhelmed and retreating. I think the key to changing this dynamic is to sit down and truly identify where being present is essential for my business. Then I can focus on really standing out in a few venues and let the rest of the areas go.

So I’ll put forth this goal: By the time I put up a new calendar (here’s a 2011 cupcake calendar I have my eye on), I want to have a list of 3 places I want to be present. Any suggestions about what the focus should be for small business folks like me? What’s working for you?

When last we spoke, I was about to lock myself away in a condo in Palm Springs. My task: bang out an entire book on free and low-cost tools in a week. I arrived ready, with everything lined up to fly through the writing of the main part of the book. No problem, I thought. All that’s left is work.

Friends, it wasn’t pretty. I began with a fairly regular schedule: 54 minutes of work every hour, I planned. My alarm would go off (an old-fashioned car horn courtesy of my iPhone), and I’d run around the condo (like a ninny, if you want to know the truth), stretching my legs, getting my blood flowing, keeping the brain cells firing. The first couple of days, I worked diligently until about 6, then I’d change into workout clothes, take an orderly stroll down to the gym, and workout for an hour while watching very bad television. It was working exactly the way I had planned.

But I kept measuring my progress with a frown. Why was I not making my daily goals of 6,000 words? What was taking so long? This part of the book was supposed to be just cleaning up the database that my assistant and I have been working on for weeks. It was supposed to go so smoothly. Before I left I even told D.J. that I thought I could finish early.

As the days wore on, I felt more and more stressed. And more. And more. I had banned D.J. from calling, but I would call him in tears. I’d switch from a breakthrough to a breakdown in an hour’s time. I started talking to myself, pacing. I ceased wearing proper undergarments, except for super fuzzy hot pink socks that I wore everywhere, even to the lobby. I ate lots of cake (cupcakes weren’t enough) and drank 64-ounce Diet Cokes that I could buy for $.89 from a convenience store a block away. And time kept passing, and it felt like the book just wasn’t going anywhere.

And then, all of a sudden, I saw the end. Before I left, I had organized the book into 10 chapters. As I wrote, I kept breaking out sections of chapters into smaller groups and rearranging things. It took me days to get through one of the monster chapters, and when so many untouched chapters loomed, it seemed like the task was impossible. But I discovered that when I opened up the new chapters, they either had finished pieces and parts, or they were much shorter than I imagined.

I ended up pushing and pushing and pushing through, and I ended up staying an extra 30 hours to finish the job.

And finish I did. And I put it in the mail a week before the deadline. And two weeks later, my publisher wrote with his official acceptance. He also added something like, “I have to admit I thought your timeline was a little ambitious, and I was very pleasantly surprised to discover how polished it is.” Now the book is pretty much in his hands, and we’re going to move to the copyeditor and the designers and the other people who do things with books.

I did it. I wrote a book. In two months. Boy does that feel good.