I (41F) need help breaking happy news to extended family (20s-60s) that is going to upset them.

TL;DR: Against my family’s wishes (or despite their lack of belief in me) I’ve written a book and my agent just sold it to a major publisher. How do I break the news while preserving the relationship?

In a couple of weeks, I’m going to be able to make the public announcement that my agent children’s novel I wrote to a major publisher. It’s going to be in a couple of well-known industry trade journals.

To be very clear: like all other authors, I’ll be sharing this announcement to Facebook, Instagram, etc which is how people who know me will find out BEFORE the book is published.

For the last couple years, for various reasons extended family and friends have been very unsupportive of my writing.

There have been nasty jabs and on one occasion, an intervention with tears and screaming, to ask me to stop trying to get published. One cousin even visited me while I was in the hospital recovering from surgery to taunt me about not being published yet.

Although none of them have actually read anything I’ve ever written, their concerns seem to center around their belief that I wasn’t good enough and was wasting my time.

In addition, they preferred that I focus on my OK-but-unfulfilling day job (“you already have TWO kids, why give an employer any more reason to doubt you?”) and wish that I’d join a church instead of trying to be true to myself and honor my gifts. It’s really felt like they were trying to gate keep me out of happiness.

While they are right that traditional publishing is competitive, the further along I got in the process, the more I saw that working hard and persevering is actually more important than talent. I have both though and it’s paid off.

To note: several are self-published which just isn’t for me. I feel like I’ll have a bigger platform being traditionally published.

I am overjoyed, but I’m not sure how family and college friends will feel. Is there a way I can break this news to people (I’m most concerned about my husband, parents and several of his siblings) beforehand without them getting upset?

I’m going to have to start sharing on social media soon.

I don’t want to burn the bridges since their shitty behavior towards me aside, they have good relationships with my kids.

Submitted November 21, 2019 at 02:30AM by notKiyosaki https://ift.tt/2Xyq1Kh