In 2019, life forced me to leave my responsibility free work style and return to a world in which I actually had to do something. But it granted me a few weeks of free time to finish the first draft of my novel before things would return to normal. I sat outside my local coffee establishment and churned through page after page. Storylines united, characters converged, and the ending battle of my work finished. I stared at those beautiful words, “THE END.”
And with that I learned that I indeed did not know everything about writing that I thought. I was just starting a new journey down the rabbit hole chasing the white rabbit of the publishing world. And it was so overwhelming. Conflicting advice, the oversimplification of the differences between self publishing, and a vast amount of information about the entire world.
Everything I read, watched, and listened to led me to one unassailable fact. I needed to learn it all. Publishing, advertising, covers, editing, writing, copy-writing. It all fell to me to figure it out and drive forward towards my goal of becoming a full time paid author. So I took classes from Brandon Sanderson, watched countless other videos, and devoured anything I could on the world of writing. And that’s when I discovered it.
It was a little video of a self-published author talking about the plan he had to earn a living and move to Mexico. He was working on getting twenty books published, earning seven dollars and fifty cents each, to retire from his full-time job. And that started the next part of my journey.
Following him down a new road on what would be the best part of my author journey so far, I watched every video from a conference called 20books2018 and the same conference the next year. There were people like me. I learned about Craig Martelle, who, like Michael Anderle, started out on a journey of self publishing that would transform lives. And not just their own.
And what I found made me hopeful. Following everything they published online about writing, I watched videos about writing, advertising, and publishing. There was so much about Facebook Ads, ProWritingAid, and Scrivner. The Self Publishing Show with James Blatch and Joanna Penn told me there was a place for me. A place where the gatekeepers couldn’t keep me from following my dream.
And they all said the same thing. Well, different versions of the same thing. You can’t sell what you don’t finish. Can’t advertise what you don’t publish. And Nothing sells the first book like the next book.
And so I find myself here writing a blog instead of finishing a novel. Posting to social media instead of working on my creative brief for my cover artist. One of a million things that are part of my business that keep me from doing the things that I actually need to finish.
So thank you for following along this rambling, inarticulate speech about how hard things are to get them finished, published, advertised, and sold. If you find any of this useful, feel free to steal it. Take it and make it your own.
Next time, I’ll be talking about when I went to my first conference in person, instead of just watching online. Until then, enjoy anything that makes you happy.