Tag: leadings

Considering self-publishing

I’d like some feedback from my readers:  Would you read my e-book? Click the comment link below and comment. You can stay anonymous so you can honestly say, “I wouldn’t read your book. I don’t even know why I’m reading your blog except that I’m your long-lost great grandma and I’m so proud of you!”

I’m actually considering self-publishing for the first time, even though my books will probably languish there without anyone reading them except my friends (and I have few close friends who will go out of their way to read my work). Why?

  1. Because I need some sense of closure.*
  2. Because I can’t make an intelligent decision of whether to continue writing unless I get feedback**
  3. Because I can’t change the world, even a little, with them on my cloud drive.
  4. Because, although agents appear to disdain self-publishing, I imagine they disdain my queries, so I’m not behind.
  5. TWO HUNDRED REJECTIONS.
  6. Because, in a fairy tale, I might get discovered in e-book.
  7. Because I believe in what Quakers call leadings***.
The book I would self-publish would be Gaia’s Hands, a prequel to my Mythos series. It doesn’t touch on that series directly — no Archetypes — but involves the origin of the modern Garden of Eden, and the influence of Gaia, the Earth-soul. It also involves two unlikely protagonists — a professor of plant biology and her much younger poet suitor — and a seemingly sentient bean stalk. If you squint closely, you’ll recognize the terrain as Central Illinois, my childhood home. (Aunt Peggy, Carla, and others who read a previous draft — this has been edited and rewritten extensively.

* Books on one’s cloud drive don’t feel like finished works.

** Again, why I keep hoping people will comment.

*** (Sorry to get minority religious here). Quakers don’t necessarily believe everything happens for a reason, so we’re not going to tell you God needed a little angel when your kid dies. However, they strongly believe God tells us to pursue something, and when we get that feeling, we seek clearness committees of our peers to sound out our leading. I never had a clearness committee on my leading to write, which may be the problem. I haven’t been able to suss out a meaning myself, because of my bad luck in getting an agent/getting published.

The Concept of Leadings

A Facebook memory today reminded me that three years ago, I had not yet found a publisher or an agent. Three years later, I have not found a publisher or an agent. (That writing device you just saw deployed is called repetition, and emphasizes the point made).

I’m not going to whine here, because that just puts me in a bad mood. I don’t want to be in a bad mood. I will, however, take an opportunity to talk about my current state, which is doubt.  Today, my doubt has nothing to do with my assessment of my talent and everything to do with 1) my books are not similar to previous bestsellers; 2) the market is overwhelmed as the result of mass-interest writing movements like Nanowrimo; 3) the industry looks more at what will sell than the message or even the skill of the writer, just as female pop singers have to have a certain “look”; 4) so many people write; few get published.

When I started writing, I hadn’t thought about publishing until partway through my first book when I realized that the story unfolding had themes that I thought needed to be released and read. Some of the themes were subversive (Gaia as the World-Soul) and some universal (the nature of friendship); some of the plot lines were subversive (the May-December relationship where the woman is older) and some not too unusual (the bad guys trying to burn down a food forest that two of the protagonists just planted). I just had this feeling — call it a leading — that I needed to write and to be heard.

A leading, according to the Religious Society of Friends, is a tug on the heart, a whisper from God, a feeling that This Is What I’m Supposed To Do, even if I don’t know the end result. I’m a member of the Religious Society of Friends, or what others call a Quaker. We try to keep our lives simple so that we can carve out a quiet place for our soul to hear what God wants from us.  (Yes, I know, how weird.)

I have been writing because I sincerely believe that I have a leading to write. The fact that I always find a new dream snippet to write from helps me believe this. I don’t have a leading to write full-time, because I’m pretty sure God wants me to eat.

But if I have a leading to write, and nobody publishes me (I will not self-publish, because nobody will read me that way either) then what’s my leading about? Is it really there? Is it time to let go of this leading? I don’t hear that still small voice advising me right now.

Thus, I doubt.