*NOTE: Oh look what I forgot to post on Monday. Blame my peach tree.
Have I been spending far too much of my writing time staring at the TV? I sure have. I've blown through seasons and series of shows I'm not even all that impressed with over the past few months. The word count is suffering. I'll admit it. I'm in the hole to the tune of over 10K words according to my revised schedule - over 20K if you look under the red scribbles to the original number. To reference last week's post, I haven't been showing up. This is a problem. Now, I'm not the kind of woman who shows up with a problem without also bringing an idea (or 20) for a solution - even when I'm only showing up to myself. I'm also not the type that looks at a problem from the surface level and claims to know exactly what its nature is. I'm more of a digger. The foundation is more important than that weird looking weeds growing out of it. So, as I've been letting my brain turn to mush watching pretty colors and varying degrees of acting ability on the screen, I've also been stewing on the foundation of my lack of motivation. I've come up with a few real-to-me issues and potentially viable plans to fix the structural integrity of my goals. Since most of these are not writing specific, I thought I'd share so you can see if any of the same problems exist in your world and then work off of my ideas to fix them. 1. Problem: Too many unrelated activities/responsibilities/goals in play at the same time. Solution: Get back to a schedule. Allot "x" amount of time to each thing that requires attention. When that time is up, move on unless there is a larger problem that will arise by not completing the activity right now (i.e. I can't just set the peaches aside of it takes longer than I anticipated to peal, slice, and get them in the freezer when they hit a certain point of ripeness. Rotting peaches mean less peaches for later. Finish the whole job before cleaning the house or writing a new chapter.) 2. Problem: Too many related activities/responsibilities/goals in play at the same time. Solution: Again, get back to a schedule. Allot a specific time to ponder publishers or agents. When that time is up, move on to writing for "x" amount of time. Schedule a "submissions day" and don't turn it into a week. Block out a chunk of time for layout if necessary. Stick to word count expectations. Try to limit the number of projects that I'm working on at any given time so that they create a balance instead of just bogging down the entire process. *Note: see #3 3. Problem: The current story is heavy. It weighs me down emotionally. This, in turn, makes me want to take a break from it. Solution: Find the balance project. Write something light and fun to shake off the dreariness this book is bringing to the table. Adjust word count expectations accordingly but stick to them. 4. Problem: Interruptions. (i.e. phone, people, cats, barking neighbor dogs, driveway/garden alarm, social media, e-mail, stray thoughts, etc.) Solution: this is the toughest one... Ignore everything that doesn't qualify as an emergency. Shut the office door. Let Scott handle the majority of other things when he's not busy. Music or ear plugs. Find my focus and take what I'm doing seriously enough to stick to it (Note: see #5). 5. Problem: Self-doubt (i.e. Thoughts that limit progress such as "this creative thing is never going to get me anywhere", "I'm wasting my time writing", "my art/writing is never going to be more than just a hobby, I should be doing other things instead" (Wait, remember how I said #4 was the toughest one? I was wrong. This is where the giant crack in the foundation is. This right here.) Solution: Get over myself. Show up. Stick to the schedule. Put in the work. Reach for the next level of success, then reach again...and again...and again...until I'm where I want to be. So, now that I have all of my foundational gremlins named, I guess I should stop making faces at them, gird my loins, and head into battle. Send chocolate. I'm going to need it.
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You may not see the relationship between Simone Biles' decision to step out of this year's Olympic competition and the relationship that all of us everyday people have with our dreams but I promise you, it's there. I also promise you that I am going to leave the injected politics of the situation out of this post while I prove it.
Back in the day - eons ago during my jr. high and early high school days - I was in gymnastics. I even placed from time to time and got to hear my name on the morning announcements for my achievements. That's a pretty cool feeling even for a shy girl. Now, before you think I was actually good, let me go ahead and burst that bubble. I was not. While flexible and able to look graceful during floor or balance beam routines, my abilities fell incredibly short in tumbling and anything that required a lack of fear. I am also not a competitive person. Like the vast majority of my counterparts, I was lower level mediocre but I truly loved the sport and harbored the not-so-secret dream of waking up one day to find that I had magically become good enough to compete in the Olympic games in my future. The thing is, dreams don't become reality by magic. This is true no matter what they may be. Dreams are all fine and dandy when they are sitting in your head as a thought. Birthing them into being requires WORK. It also requires a plan, tenacity, and resilience. Without these things talents cannot be developed. A person cannot overcome the fear of both success and failure. The path cannot be forged. Now let's talk about pain for a moment because guess what: Turning a dream into reality requires pain. The undertaking is, at it's foundation, a birthing process. Pain is part of the territory. In the case of gymnastics, yes, gymnasts train and compete while injured. I can't tell you the number of times I performed a routine with at least one ankle taped nearly stationary because I had twisted it earlier and needed the added stability. I had friends who came to practice or meets with broken fingers or toes. We wore knee supports or wrist supports. Ace bandages and sports tape were common place. Pulled muscles were everyday events. Even at the ripe old age of 14, most of us didn't know what it was like to not be at some level of soreness every day. The top gymnast in my school - a girl who was good enough that she competed in larger area/state competitions - wore a tens unit during practice after breaking her arm. And before you make that face, this is normal. This is what it takes to compete even at the level where you're lucky if 20 people are in the bleachers watching. We also showed up for practice or competitions when our hearts were breaking as they did so very often at that age. We showed up after we came in last on the scoreboard. We showed up when we were struggling with every day life. We showed up when we were afraid we might not be able to fit it all in. We showed up...until we didn't. That was the moment that the dream died. So, how does this relate to Ms. Biles, those of us trying to birth that weird little creative urge into something viable, or anyone just working on the dream of making ends meet? Let's work our way up from the incredibly difficult world of just keeping up with the bills. In order to live paycheck to paycheck while keeping your head above water, you plan for your expenses and work accordingly. This means going to work when you'd rather go on vacation. You go to work when your back hurts or you've had a craptastic day. You set the alarm and get your butt out of bed when you didn't sleep well. You keep your eye out for a better paying job than the one you have now. If you want to actually put money away into savings, you step up that game and do more of it. How many people do you know in wrist braces for carpal tunnel, or special inserts to help with sciatica, or those who work around broken bones? How about the ones who manage with disabilities? What about those who show up even in the middle of divorces or custody battles or shortly after the death of a loved one? How many people out there are trying to turn their creative dreams into reality even though it feels like all they encounter is rejection or lukewarm, shrugging acceptance that disappears almost the second it is given? How many creatives out there feed their dreams with tiny scraps of hope and haul their behinds out of bed when they have the flu just to move them a minuscule step closer to reality? How many work through injury and apathy in the hopes of seeing that little spark they have inside them light up the world? Like I said, turning a dream into reality is a painful process. It honestly doesn't matter what the dream is. Just ask Wesley from The Princess Bride: "Life is pain, princess...anyone who says differently is selling something." So, how does this relate to Ms. Biles? Do I think she failed? Do I think she should be honored for her choice to step back? Honestly, neither. And this is another really important point I'd like to make here. My opinion of her decision SHOULD NOT matter. She made the choice for her own reasons as it should be. I will be snotty enough to say that I wish she had made it prior to committing to participation on the world stage, but that brings up an even bigger point that I want to mention: outside expectation. We, as onlookers, tend to push people we don't even know to greater and greater levels of achievement just to please us. Sometimes this is a good thing as it encourages progress. I think this is especially true in the beginning stages of bringing a dream to life, when the struggle becomes drudgery, or when an individual has hit an uncomfortable plateau in their journey. Without a little outside pressure, those dreams would wilt and die. Other times, as with Ms. Biles, that encouragement shifts into a demand for more and greater achievements that (most likely) have nothing to do with her original goals. It's like adding too much fertilizer to a garden. Instead of nourishment, the dream burns up. Had she competed at the same superb level as before, there are far too many people in the audience who would have been disappointed that she did not bring more to the table this time. Why on earth would she have any desire at all to continue working through the physical and emotional discomforts/pain in order to have the armchair gymnasts out there casting disappointed looks at her as they lounged on their couches eating their favorite snack? She has already achieved the dream of Olympic gold. She is not responsible for fulfilling the dreams of those who only want to watch her do it again...only "better" this time. At the same time, I wish that she had come to this conclusion earlier. I wish that she had not been in the spotlight when she made it. It's a seriously off note in the symphony of her accomplishments, and the timing does not speak to the professionalism that I believe Olympic competition should require. In my writing world, it would be like me achieving the status of having three books in the series I'm working on hit the best seller list and then pulling the fourth from publication the day before it was supposed to be released. My guess is that she'll go into retirement. If she had a dream to take home the gold from another Olympics, that dream is probably gone now. No judgement, here. That's just the cost of stepping back when she did. Reality is unforgiving to dreams that way. I hope you're still breathing through the difficulties of the next step towards yours. A day late...and we won't even talk about dollars here. Blame the title of this week's post. Yes, yes I have been distracted. Thanks for asking.
"But whatever could be distracting you?" you might ask. The short answer is: What isn't distracting me? The result looks like an ADHD squirrel went on an espresso bender and then went straight into meltdown after the part where everything is in some state of progress that can't be backed out of. Mostly this has to do with getting ready for winter. It is garden season and while not everything is ripe yet, it is quickly approaching the day where it will all come in pretty much at once. This means I need to get ready. My main focus has been on freezer and pantry space, canning jars (and whether the off brand lids will seal reliably), and making sure that anything that should be used sooner rather than later gets its opportunity. Oh, and I'm making a batch of mead. I've made wine the past few years but this is a first for mead and I find the differences really interesting. The hubby is trying to coax the garden to produce not only our summer season but also a late fall crop. The cats are mostly soaking up the sun and jumping at anything that moves in the yard. They have to hone those instincts, after all, before they settling into the pudgy laziness of cold days. It might not be Christmas in July, but it is absolutely summer looking toward winter. So, where does the writing fit into all of this? Where is the art? Well, they are inching along, slower than normal but still inching along. It's a chrysalis time of year where the changes seem invisible from day to day. That's okay. I've been here before. I know how it works. While I'm waiting for the beautiful pop of a sealed jar full of spaghetti sauce or sauerkraut for New Year's Eve, those words scrawled during the quiet moments are adding up on my paper. They don't count until they are typed, but that's okay. They are in their cocoon just waiting to burst forth. The ideas for art are percolating through my brain, and oh do I have plans for when the time is right. I'm down to waiting for responses from two separate books. I will not cry (much) if they both give my work a pass. Maybe that realization comes from this time of focusing on future necessities. Maybe my inner squirrel has stopped running around like a mad thing enough to focus on what really matters to me. Maybe it's just the calm between action (read that as desperation, if you would) sequences in the plot of my creative life. Whatever the reason, I will look at this as a good thing. If you are in your summer creative cocoon, too, I hope that you are growing beautiful wings. Who knows, maybe we'll get to dance on air together one day soon. I've got a dirty little secret...and you're reading it right now. I, Josie Dorans, am a procrasti-writer. (*everybody say, hi Josie.)
I will quite literally write anything but what I know I should be writing at any given time. This blog is only one example. I write lists. I write snippets. I write recipes I'll never actually follow. Heck, I would probably transcribe half of a dictionary on the right day because I had some idiotic idea to use it to improve my handwriting. And don't even get me started on editing. Rewriting a piece to death is a whole other can of worms. Why? Well, to avoid writing what I should be writing, of course. Duh! We all do it to some extent or another. At least that's what I tell myself. I also tell myself that it only happens when the next chunk of the story is brewing in my brain or some character from something else that I am also diligently not writing shows up doing cartwheels and demanding a spot in a story they don't belong to. Is it all a lie? Don't ask me. I'm too busy believing the inner narrative that keeps me from heaving every last word into the fire - and then immediately burning myself trying to rescue my little worlds from the inferno. The weird thing is that it works for me. Well, mostly. It does throw my writing schedule (handwritten, no less) out of whack sometimes. That's a bit of a downer. But overall, it does buy me time to get past whatever hang-up or stumbling block I'm pondering in the piece that should be front and center. Take the current W.I.P (work-in-progress for those of you who haven't heard the term) for instance. It's book 2 of a series that I'm hoping to one day find a publisher to give it a home. My overall goal is around 90,000 words. I'm currently sitting at 38,663 words with a goal of reaching 44,000 by Saturday. It will take a miracle of no small magnitude to make this happen. The problem? I've got a serial killer who is needed in one location about 20,000 words from now and she's too close to the spot right this minute. This is an opportunity to drive her even more nuts than she already is. The story will benefit from this even if she won't. I know approximately what is going to happen, I just haven't been made privy to exactly how it's all going to go down. Not only that but by golly-gumption the whole series doesn't have the tone I originally wanted and it irks me way down deep where the worst irks lurk. I'm not saying that I don't like what I'm writing. I do. I like it quite a bit, in fact. It's just not showing up how I thought it was going to. Happens all the time. My characters also love to run amok and screw up my carefully laid outlines - say by being way to close way too soon just as one example. That, mild disgruntlement with the fact that my story listens to my directions just about as well as my cats do sometimes boots me out of the progress and makes me have to dig out my thinking cap. And so, I procrasti-write to fill the time between inspirational episodes. Butt in chair. Words on paper. It's the only way to move forward even when they aren't the "right" words. ...will they come?
Now that's a question for the ages, especially in the digital world. For example, here's what I've got: * A website for each of my author names * A Facebook page for each of my author names * A Twitter account for Josie Dorans * An Amazon author page for each of my author names * KDP accounts for each author name * An account on Channillo for Josie Dorans (although one of the series is by my nicer side) * An account on Smashwords for each of my author names * My nicer side has a Youtube channel * My nicer side has a Bitchute channel * An account on Duotrope (that I really should actually use) * An account on Pintrest (that I should actually use for book stuff, too) * An account on Wattpad (that I should use) * An account on Upworks (that I've decided to ignore) * An account on Ko-fi that I've pulled everything off of * An account at Authorhouse for my very first book * An account at Freelancer which I believe I've cancelled * And account on Upwork that I ignore * A Zoom account that I keep swearing I'll use for book things but don't * An account at Zazzle with some book related merchandise for my other name that I should make more of an attempt with * And I belong to at least 2 online writer's groups that I am only marginally active with * I'm about to embark on the Amazon Vella route (Pray for me.) I'm juggling multiple books with each name along with some videos about putting together a picture book. If we go with only the books I've self-published, we're talking 9. If we include anthologies I'm included in, that number jumps up to 16. E-zines bring me up to 19. You can also include the newspaper article on the West Virginia Writers, Inc. Summer Conference to round things out to 20 or look way back in the shadows of time for the piece I had published when I was graduating high school if we want to make the count 21 so it can legally drink. So, now that I can sit back in my chair and tell myself the lie that I'm a fairly prolific writer, you may ask how these platforms have led to overwhelming success and phenomenal sales. The short and incredibly depressing answer is: They haven't. Why? That's an easy one. It has two parts and I can't seem to convince myself I'm good at either one. First, you have to get people to go to these places. Forget about "organically" growing your platform. You need to be a border collie rounding up a herd of readers and directing them to the the right pastures. Once they are there, you then need to convince them to part with their money in exchange for your product. Sounds easy-peasy, right? I mean, it's just 2 steps and of course they'll love everything about your book. It's wonderful, for Pete's sake. How could they not want to take it home and curl up with it? The truth is that if you are like me your inner border collie may have arthritis, cataracts, and mange. Your herd is comprised of family, close friends, and fellow writers. The sad truth is that - at least for me - that combination just doesn't produce sales. I love them all. Each and every one of them is near and dear to my heart. They just aren't the right audience. This isn't their fault and I don't expect them to give me a pity buy out of their hard earned paychecks. Sure, sometimes someone will pick one up here or there and I appreciate that. I just don't expect it of them. They cheer for me. They (occasionally) share my posts. They add what they can to my emotional support network. They just don't make me a best seller. The tricky part is to find the right audience to attract. While you are doing that, you also need to keep that audience entertained. You can't just rain down advertisements and expect them to enjoy being loved only for their money. It's the dating game in a way - and lord knows I've been out of that miasma of chaos for a very long time so have no clue how the heck it works these days. Another day I'll go into some of the great advice that has worked well for other authors but has fallen flat for me. I'll even give you my take on why these awesome ideas may not have worked out as well here as they have elsewhere. Hopefully, one or more will help you grow. I'm all for success whether it's mine or not. If I'm destined to always be a bridesmaid and never a bride, well then, so be it. Consider me your cheerleader in this game. (Just remember, I'm a writer. I'm probably too broke to buy your book. LOL) I need to preface this post with some disclaimers and related facts about me.
1) I am not a political creature - especially not online. I am a fiction writer. This, in my mind, means you pay me to lie to you. Why on earth would anyone think that makes me qualified to share my opinions as fact? Why on earth would anyone want to hear my political opinions or take them to heart? No lie, I roll my eyes every single time an actor or fiction writer uses their platform to share their opinion on anything political. 2) I'm more of an introvert than an extrovert. Sure, I can fake an outgoing nature when necessary but I much prefer individuals over groups and absolutely prefer small groups over large ones. I also tend to cheer for underdogs. 3) I believe in giving every single person I meet at least two meetings before I start to form an opinion on whether to like them or not. Sure, I typically get a pretty good "read" within 15 minutes of meeting someone, but I have off days. I figure they do, too. This might sound like my nice side shining through, but in reality I find it more interesting to dislike someone for solid personal reasons than to dislike them for some blanket excuse involving one adjective or another. What can I say? I'm a "verbs > adjectives" kind of gal. 4) I - like every other author out there - truly dislike the process of searching out an agent or publisher. No offence intended to those working in those fields, but it's a lot like picking through a field of land mines while wearing a prom dress and carrying a wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tubeman. 5) I really weighed out whether I was going to post this or not as I am in the process of searching for an agent and/or a publisher and truly fear that a post like this could destroy my chances of finding one. Thankfully, it's long, so what are the odds it will hold an attention span even this far? All that being said, politics plays a part in the book world. This is a (sad) fact of the business. Let's face it, no matter how you feel about political correctness, censorship, or the tradition of the written word stirring the cauldron of independent thought, there is a pachyderm treading the publishing halls. And how about those current "cancel culture" trends that exist no matter how much you might want to ignore the stomping and trumpeting. Terms like "sensitivity reader", "cultural appropriation", "diversity" and "inclusive language" seem to be argued more than the old standby evils of plagiarism and improper manuscript formatting. Don't even get me started on adjective labels for the authors who are currently being sought after. Suffice it to say that nearly everyone one of us writing today is either "too something" or "not enough something" to fit the nit-picky list of adjectives that have absolutely nothing to do with the story being presented. Worse, from what I've seen, the definitions of what is acceptable today may not be the same definitions tomorrow let alone 2 year from now. Trying to find the perfect formula of characters, setting, and plot to please everyone is impossible. True, that's always been the case but these days it feels like the formula has been written in a forgotten offshoot of Sanskrit using live ants as the medium. If you don't believe me, do an internet search of books that publishers have cancelled shortly before their release because someone decided they were offensive. Now, being a reader and having "edited" (read that as "rewritten") for an overseas company in my freelancing life I can honestly say that there is a lot of stuff out there that can be considered offensive in general terms by most people. There are a great many books that I've passed by because the excerpts I've read showed me that I would not enjoy them. I just always figured that it was my responsibility to choose to cast my vote for the success of any book with my pocketbook. Now? Well, let's just say that I'm not appreciating being told what is appropriate for me to read/write and what is not - especially when I see some of the content that is trending. This is coming from me: a writer who occasionally offends herself with some of what she writes (blame my characters, they have minds of their own. I'm just along for the ride) and is not big on the idea of outside censorship unless it deals with what a parent decides to withhold from their minor child. This affects each of us as writers. How many of you have tried to navigate the mine field of disgruntlement by writing a story that hits all the right notes? How many of your characters have you had to twist into some new form during editing. How many settings have you changed? How much more carefully have you had to pick through the editors and publishers to find one that might take a look at your creation and not turn their nose up because the current political landscape doesn't favor one sentence on page three? Or worse yet, how about finding one that not only might think your work is worthy but will also consider representing YOU with all of your varied adjectives? Note: In case you're wondering why I'm posting this now, my nicer side just went through a list of 96 agents who are looking for picture books. Out of that list, there were 3 that I think might consider it. It's a picture book with 32 pages and 13 words. My NICE side created it. How cataclysmicly wrong could my book really be that I could only find 3 maybes? Sure, some of the places not queried were not a good fit for actual reasons like: that agent only handles education related books, or they only handle list books with photos instead of created art. The rest? Well, that's where the murky waters of current trends come into play. I'm all for diversity in writers and writing. I just always considered diversity to be more...well...diverse. As an author on the hunt for representation, it is my job to look at what that representation is looking for and make a realistic evaluation of my likelihood of fulfilling that desire. Sending to everyone willy-nilly is a waste of their time and a waste of my time. It also screams that I couldn't be bothered to do my research on them which is just bad form. Long and short, me and my book were simply not the right mix of things for the other 93 picture book agents on the list. Now translate that to a novel length manuscript. It's maddening, isn't it? It's also exhausting and more than a little soul sucking. So, what to do? I mean, do we just give up? Do we write and then lock it away until sometime in the vague future where it might fit in? Do we try to write to the market - while keeping in mind that we are looking at a market that is at least 2 years away in the case of the larger publishers? Do we try to make the middle ground of self-publishing work because the puzzle in front of us has no reference picture and is most likely missing half the pieces? I don't think there is one correct answer aside from this: Be true to yourself when you write. You have to sell it to readers and that means you have to care about it enough to make them care about it, too. Most importantly, in the end you have to live with your work. Make sure you haven't twisted your stories so much that they keep you up at night. Welcome, welcome. Come aboard and have a seat. Grab an oar. We're all in this boat together and I can promise you some rough seas ahead. Life jacket? Did you just ask for a life jacket? We don't need no stinking life jackets here. It's sink or swim, you silly head. Now, adventuring we go! If you will look to your right, we are about to pass the old word miner's cabin. Looks like some shenanigans are afoot. You may want to duck, that thesaurus is coming straight at is! But I digress... This blog - part of my "procrasti-writing process" - is brought to you by my cats. They have evidently gotten tired of me mumbling, muttering, and generally cussing about certain aspects of this writing-to-authorship game and have deserted my office like a bunch of rats fleeting a sinking ship. Such is life. Even the plague afflicting my marketing skills can't seem to lure them back from the sunshine outside. Who can blame them. But here we are, you and I: Two writers locked away in our garrets dreaming big dreams and smelling in equal parts of hope and desperation. We get it. They don't. No explanation will ever make a non-writer understand our compulsion. Again, such is life. So, this blog is for you...and me. It's a place to dig under the rocks of this writing life and drag the ugly little slimy things out into the open so we can name them - and then call them names. It's to make the big monsters just a little smaller. Maybe we can even give some a spa day to make them more agreeable. Who knows, there might even be a chance that somewhere along the way, we'll be able to save each other from the whirlpools and waterfalls so we can all reach the magical land of Success! Welcome aboard, mateys!
Grab a bucket and start bailing. "It's March - well, technically the end of March or nearly so. That means that I am officially almost 3 whole months into trying to figure out The Plan. Honestly, it's not working so great. I know where I want to go, but the terrain looks like and Escher print. My role has changed. Some might think this is a midlife crisis type of moment, and maybe it is to a point. I'm 44. My children are both in their 20's. Raising them has ended. Homeschooling is over. It is time to focus on other things. The problem(s)? Well, they are many and varied. Quite a few of them are tied to past decisions that didn't quite work out as expected. I thought I would have a smoother transition into the role of Empty Nester than is happening. It's frustrating. I know how we got here. I'm just not sure how to get things moving in a positive direction again."
So starts a blog post that was never posted way back when. It's nearly July of 2021 now - and I'm 49 for those of you counting. Why the heck am I including this? Well, that's easy. It's still relevant in many ways here. Maybe it is where you are as well. The dream of becoming a successful author is not typically an overnight thing. We plod along, second guessing ourselves and wondering at our sanity level when it comes to the pursuit. Yet, we plod along. Why? Because we are writers. We can't help it. Maybe our blood cells look more like words than little flying saucers. Perhaps we're actually channeling stories from the great beyond that will not lie quiet until they are told. Most likely we are simply nucking futs with an overdeveloped sense of lunatic optimism. Whatever the cause, we HAVE TO write. There isn't a choice. The stories are in us and they need to get out if we have any hope of sleep. That would all be fine and dandy if it wasn't for the fact that writing in today's world doesn't mean scribbling out words and shoving them into a locked drawer. Oh no, we don't get off that easy. We need to PUBLISH! Our characters and plots absolutely need to see the light of day and find readers to love them in order to stop jumping around like a mental flea infestation. But wait! There's more! You don't just want to hand things over for free. I mean, that would mean that your time and effort is not only worthless (and that you are consequently the leach whose hobby keeps sucking at the bank account instead of turning into an actual income), but it would undercut the work of all the other writers you know and admire! Which means that no matter how you publish, you've also got to SELL. That means marketing plans, flaming hoops, the skills of a circus ringmaster, and the patience of a saint. You see how this thing that you love to do snowballs, right? Only it doesn't really snowball. Snowballs roll. This mess just avalanches straight down on your head in a large pile of numbing reality weighing down your efforts to - you know - write. But hey, maybe you're the winner of the golden ticket and just don't know it yet. Maybe that new little darling sitting in the notebook or word file is going to bring in a contract and sales that will let you retire to that private island with the helipad...or at least buy a replacement for your janky office chair. So you keep putting one word in front of the other until the story is done. Then you send it out into the world with the biggest hope filled balloon you can find. Because that's what it takes. All those writers who talk about sitting down at the keyboard and bleeding their story out onto the page don't mention how afterwards you are supposed to haul your anemic self out into the daylight, look appealing, and joyfully convince everyone you run across to spend their money on that piece of your soul squirming around on the paper. I, for one, say you're allowed to mourn the idea that you can't just write anymore. You can't sit in your pj's and sip wine while the royalties roll in. And if that mourning requires a fit now and then, I'm sure not going to judge. Heck, I'll rant right along with you. |
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June 2022
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