I live to create

In putting together the parts for the book-to-be, I discovered something important about me — I like creating things. Not just for myself, but I like what I create going out to the public in tangible form.

I don’t have the talent to draw, build, or knit. People keep me away from sharp objects like power drills and saws. (With good reason; I once had a power drill fall on my foot.) My kitchen is not organized enough to bake for others, like the woman who makes macarons in town. I can write.

And now it looks like I can publish.

I don’t know if I will put everything I’ve written into self-publishing. I need to see if this book can get traction. I need to see if my queries (now improved) can get traction. But I have time, because I am satisfying a most basic instinct of mine — creating and putting forth into a hopefully irresistible package.

Getting excited about self-publishing

I’m excited about this new book thing.

I think it will be ready for a November launch.I have a cover for it, I have some blurbs to go on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. I have other things to do, but I think I can get them done in time.

I know I will probably not get too many readers. But self-publishing a little book like this breaks a curse I have in my mind that I will never get published. It also breaks me in on how to publish on a low-stakes book. (I consider my more serious books, the fantasy novels, high-stakes.)

And this particular book … Kris Kriegel, the young toymaker with a Santa sensibility, has been with me as a character since high school. The first scene of The Kringle Conspiracy is basically the story I wrote in high school for my creative writing class. That was 40 years ago, and it’s still as relevant now.

So I’m excited, and I’m looking forward to a Kringle Christmas.

In the Flow

I’m happiest when I have something to work on, something that catches my fancy. When that happens, I can give it intense focus such that I float within the bubble of my attention and time flies by without me.

This, in the psychological literature, is called flow. Flow takes a person out of time and place, and becomes almost a type of meditation. It requires tasks that one is competent yet challenged in. Flow is good for creating happiness.

I’ve been creating book covers (both e-book and traditional) for The Kringle Conspiracy, which (depending on whether I feel it needs a dev edit) will be coming out in time for Santa. My favorite beta reader (Hi Sheri!) is on it, and my husband has already given it a good look through. Because it’s so short and so simple for something I write, it may be ready. In the meantime, the cover is ready.

So designing that cover gave me flow. What else gives me flow? Writing, at least in the drafting stage. Reading. Sometimes teaching, but not lately with all the equipment I have to sling around.

It’s important to have flow, to take one away from worries and stress (like COVID) and the like.

What are your flow activities?

Judge this book by its cover

If I feel confident enough to go with self-publishing this Christmas season, this will be the cover to my book.

Look! I might be self-publishing something!

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out what I would write for NaNoWriMo, which is in November, but it’s never too early. Richard, my husband and partner in crime, suggested rewriting a Christmas Romance novel I put aside in despair thinking it wasn’t romancy enough.

I thought about that, and then looked for a tool to help it be more romancy (it’s now a word, deal with it) and found Jami Gold’s romance beat sheet. Walking through the beat sheet, it seems that there’s not a huge amount of work I need to do — emphasize some points, make sure the timing is right, fix a subplot. This can be done.

Then I stepped into Facebook and asked my friends if I should be fixing a novel that read a bit like a Hallmark Christmas movie. I got a resounding “Yes” with one of my friends, Heather, suggesting I self-publish it.

And the bubble up giggle of delight broke out. Maybe this, a low-stakes publication, would be my entry into self-publishing! I don’t think of myself as a romance writer, so I don’t have much ego invested in this if it doesn’t do well.

So guess what I’ll be doing today? Rewriting, daydreaming, and shooting for a mid-October publication date.

Any of my self-publishing friends out there, please check in with me!

Contemplating self-publishing

I have decided that I may self-publish if my efforts to publish traditionally don’t yield any results.

This is a big change, as those of you who have been following the blog would notice. I had been strenuously arguing that self-publishing doesn’t give one the strong incentive to improve and requires a lot of work from the author. I would still argue this, but I have been improving and submitting since 5 years ago, and this is a long time to be getting rejections (about 250 or so).

Then I found that an author I follow has been self-publishing for close on two years after her publisher and her agent dismissed her. This was an author who had three books traditionally published.

It is obvious the industry no longer nurtures its writers. I think this was what I was looking for in a traditional path — some nurturing, because this is all new to me. Not that I would be a victim for fraud — I’m actually good at spotting that. It’s just that I wanted advice and encouragement, and now I know that’s not happening.

So what I’m going to do is let this query run through (I get rejections daily), and I’m going to research the possibility of self-publishing (platforms, where to get cover art, etc.). I might do one more set of queries 6 months from now while I’m working on a plan to brush up my media presence, etc.

We shall see.

Fantasies, Aspirations, and Goals

The average self-publisher sells about 250 copies of their work.

Hearing this statistic floored me. I have no doubt that it’s accurate. It’s just that — that’s not a lot of copies. I thought I was being conservative when I set a goal of 400 copies if I self-published.

I thought I was being realistic when I ruled out thousands upon thousands of copies and the New York Times bestselling list. It turns out that my scaled back fantasies — even the 400 copies if I self-published — are too unrealistic. Without realistic grounding, our aspirations are set by our fantasies, and our aspirations in turn set our goals.

It’s time for me to figure out how to pare back my goals, fueled by fantasy. My fantasy was that I would have an agent and would find a publisher of size (say, one of the Big 5) and go on a book tour where someone else made the arrangements for me and I didn’t have to buy my own copies to sign and sell.

In a way, this is freeing. This makes me realize that having 20 readers of my blog is perhaps normal, and that the agents who reject me need to so they don’t starve, given the odds of someone picking up a book and reading it.

It also means that I will never get external validation of my work if I gauge success by my fantasies. How many readers is “enough” if the average self-published book gets 250 reads? What does a rejection mean if the object is not quality but saleability?

My goals will stay the same:

Get picked up by an agent or publisher, avoiding vanity presses and publishing mills

If the above doesn’t work, research and develop an effective self-publishing strategy, avoiding self-publishing scams

What changes are the standards for success. I’m still working on scaling down my expectations. This will be difficult.

An Epiphany on a Long Drive

Yesterday, I drove past fields of white against a cold blue sky, scattered with wind turbines like ice giants. My playlist, a random mix dominated by the local bands I have known and loved over the years, lulled me into a sense of introspection.

When I was younger, I declared that local music was the salvation of the universe — said in a dry, understated tone for comic effect, of course. Nonetheless, I believed it. The bands I loved ranged from introspective roots rock to bagpipe jazz to Celtic rock fusion, and I loved their energy, their bravado, their desire to create a sound that wasn’t like every other band out there. At the same time I wanted them to become big enough so that other people could enjoy them, I feared what the corporate music machine would do to them.

I hit an epiphany somewhere north of Creston, IA, in the icy white afternoon through which I drove:

Why did I see self-publishing as different from what my friends in local bands went through?

Why did I see big contracts as something that would kill my friends’ spirit and creativity, but I didn’t see the parallels in my own life?

I don’t know how ready I am for self-publishing, but I am beginning to see it in a different way.

Expectations

I’m down to twenty readers, but I am assured that all of you are real people instead of bots or that the CIA is no longer reading this for hidden messages — just kidding. I think. Thank you for following me.

I’m at a loss as to how to get more readers. This is my big worry about embarking in self-publishing as well. In a world where everything is screaming for attention, how does one actually get attention? Quality is not enough, as is evidenced by many industries — music, books, movies — where the hyped gets more interest than the small shining gem of a creation.

What’s enough? I’ve never stopped to consider this.

Expectations have a way of expanding. At the beginning of this journey, I didn’t know if I could write 50,000 words. Then, as I reached that point, I expected to be able to write whole novels which grew to 80,000 words or more. Then I expected to get published, which hasn’t happened yet but could happen if I self-published. Yet now I expect to have more than twenty people read my blog. And I expect them to comment occasionally.

Maybe I should scale my expectations down. Maybe twenty faithful readers are enough. Maybe self-publishing, with its potential of only a handful of readers, is enough.