Earlier this week, just a day after I’d released Meet the Lidwells, I started thinking about a lot of different things related to the writing projects I had going on. I was working out how to publicize the new book while also plugging my trilogy, reading over the chapters of the Apartment Complex story that I was going to read for FOGcon, playing around with my daily words (which are currently focused on In My Blue World), and the evening session words for AC. All while hoping the Day Job wouldn’t cause any delays for everything else. In other words, The Typical Day in the Life of a Writer.
What threw me was that I didn’t feel that moment of wondering if I would ever be a pro writer or if I was just going to continue faking it.
I actually had to stop and think about that for a moment. I’ve been writing for over thirty years now. Sure, most of that time was spent learning, hitting roadblocks and dead-ends, wasting time, getting stuck on the OK Plateau, and trying to figure out what the hell I had to do to make any of this work. I’ve rarely had a crippling self-doubt about it, but I’ve certainly had my moments of wondering if this was as good as I was going to get, and that maybe I’d better focus more on a Day Job career. I hated that feeling with a passion.
Self-publishing the trilogy turned that around; this proved I could achieve the goals I’d set for myself. But what cemented it for me was the release of Meet the Lidwells; that’s when I’d proved to myself that the trilogy wasn’t a fluke or my One Shot at Greatness. [The unexpected icing on the cake, I should add, was the multiple downloads of the Bridgetown Trilogy this past week, thanks to the Smashwords sale. One or two downloads makes me happy; five or six a day all week long felt amazing. I thank all of you new readers for that!!]
That feeling when you suddenly realize you’re exactly where you want to be as a writer, though?
That feels absolutely AMAZING. It took forever to get here, but I’m glad I stayed with it.
Welcome to Bridgetown 