Woes and Elations of a Writer

Have you ever tried being every single member of a business? Creative force, CEO, accountant, editor, publicity manager? I know that a lot of people have, and if you're out there, then you'll sympathize with my experience over the past three or four months.

As I reach the end of a push to bring my book Crystal and Sin out and available, along with promoting it and polishing it so it's worth buying and people notice it, I look back and feel both relief and sadness. The elation of going through getting my work out there, and seeing the first sales appear is a feeling I'll never forget. It's small at the moment, but it's still significant. It's like watching a doorway opening in your life. There's also the feedback you get from people, and I've been consistently pleased by their definition of it as a "page turner". No matter how weird a reader finds something, if it's a page-turner, then that's a good sign. It means the story you've constructed is drawing them in and hooking them, as any good story should.

But on the debit side, there's the sheer frustration I've had to battle to make sure these things don't just implode on themselves. Take the Nook Press editor. At first, it seemed a suitable way for me to adjust my text so other formats would accept it. Then I discovered that it's a poorly constructed editing machine that forced me to shift pieces of text around that had gotten misplaced due to spacing issues, adjust fonts when they refused to cooperate, and insist on the correct positioning of story segments (chapters). Then there's the flurry of effort going into the initial release and publicity, which can seriously drain you. You need to edit the manuscript, turn it into different formats for different publishing sites, go out and spread the word using social media and your contacts. By the end of the day, you're nearly shaking. The first time I did this for Crystal and Sin Vol. 1, I couldn't write for nearly two weeks!

I'm planning a holiday when July 7 has been and gone, and I'll have no need to bring out anything until the planned Complete Edition in December. Then what? I don't know. Maybe I'll find an agent between then and now, maybe I'll suddenly catch on and be a hot commodity, maybe the sun will freeze in the sky. I don't know. But I do know that I'll keep trying. I love writing and story-telling, and I'm determined to succeed. I've got the skills and the support, now all I need is the sales...