The Reality of Writing

I'm spending more and more time away from writing. There is actually life to live, after all. It's easy to get sucked into any enterprise or hobby, or whatever one chooses to call it, and inflate its importance. I've always needed something ~ and for most of my life that "something" was my job. Well, I don't have that anymore to lean on or grouse about or any of the other things associated with work. So I shifted my focus to writing. Unlike the vast majority of my jobs, I like writing. At least I did until I began to put too much pressure on myself to succeed or to at least excel at sales. Frankly, marketing was what sucked the joy out of it for me. 

How I even fell into the marketing trap was one accidentally-discovered review. I'd self-published three novels beginning around six or so years ago, and never once did I receive a review, nor did I expect any. I may have sold one or two copies, but I can't even be sure of that. I never looked! What I cared about was writing, not selling. Once I realized that novels were not my niche, I penned a novella and doing so opened a whole new world to me. All those bits of advice I'd absorbed over the years, all the "shoulds", had made novel writing excruciating. Subplots I didn't want to create, padding my word count because I was supposed to hit a magic number. I didn't even set out to write a novella; I just wrote. It was one plot that carried through to the end, and I liked it. As always, I didn't expect any sales nor obviously any reviews.

One day I was checking my book on Amazon for some reason and discovered to my amazement that it had one review. I couldn't even fathom how someone had found my book. A person actually read it? And the review was positive!

That single solitary review made me want more. I hadn't even considered that anyone would ever read my work, much less like it, but now I was "good". In hindsight, I was just okay. But once a craving takes hold, we want more and more of that thing that made us feel so good. I'd never, ever researched marketing. Now I did, and I made a lot of mistakes, hit a lot of dead ends. Still, the craving persisted.

It affected my writing. Now that there was a possibility that another pair of eyes might land on my work, I subconsciously began considering what readers might like. In some ways that made my writing better, tighter; but in others it constrained me. It was all fine and dandy to write something I'd enjoy reading, but quite another to worry about other people's tastes.

For essentially my four most recent works, my marketing efforts continued to intensify, until here I sit today, less successful than ever. I feel like such a fool. In reality I'm not stupid, but I wasn't living in reality.

Any halfway decent writer can sell books ~ that was my mindset. I've seen it over and over. I found Reddit when I was looking for ARC readers. Though I never found any, I discovered the self-publishing sub and enjoyed reading posts from others like me. Except they weren't like me in the most important respect. They sold books. Did that mean I wasn't even halfway decent? I know that's not true, but every post confirmed that I was a failure.

Yesterday, after almost all my promos have run, I sold one copy. Whereas I was once thrilled to find that New Kaitlyn had sold a single copy, now I'm disheartened. 

Instead of frantically searching for validation, I'm basically done. I don't want to do it anymore. By "it", I mean push my work. I do want to keep writing, but I no longer feel driven. Know what I enjoy? Sticking my self-designed book cover on my website for me to admire. Writing a story that I want to tell and that only I will probably read. Feeling proud of myself for doing it. If anyone stumbles upon one of my books and buys a copy, great. When no one bought my first three books it didn't affect me in the least. I kept writing for the fun of it and to keep improving. Slapping them up on Amazon was just an extra thing to do, rather than bury them on my computer inside a Word folder.  

I'm going to finish revising Second Chance and do it right. And interestingly ~ to me. I won't care how someone else, some stranger, might want it to go. I care how I want it to go. 

I'm returning to my early days of writing and remembering why I did it in the first place.