And I'm not. You were expecting me to contradict my headline, right? Nope, I'm no Stephen King but we don't need another one.
I'm speaking to myself, not you. You? You'll make it. But me? I’m an artist, not a writer. At least I used to be an artist who actually sold my art. But then I got divorced, leaving the full-time care of my elderly parents to themselves and the little time I had left to paint. I had to get a real job. You have to know, being a creative and doing a non-creative day job is hard on the brain. I've heard that your day job should not be the same thing as your creative job but I didn't have a choice in the matter. There are no day 'art jobs' unless I paint houses.
But I decided I was going to make it even harder by adding a new goal: writing a book. I drug my feet for 13 years, not wanting to write that book. I was making notes, calling it 'writing' but I knew that wasn't writing, that was thinking on paper. I needed to get serious because I kept hearing that people are helped more by my pain and failures than by my successes. God put us here to help people and that's my driving force, my calling. And I have more than my fair share of failures; I can share those.
When I say 'calling', it's not an angelic voice where the Heavens part and tell me exactly what needs to happen. It was more like a nagging, painful remembering, a persistent reminder of why I was procrastinating. I would lie awake at night, listening to that voice, thinking that there are people out there going through a fresher version of the Hell I’ve been through. Maybe they are contemplating ending the pain in a permanent way when I know firsthand that the pain will actually subside if we endure. I have to tell them that. The only people who are helped by my silence are my grown kids, apparently.
When I got down to writing the book, being serious about it, I was then told by my aunt who knows a publisher, “You write great letters but books are hard to sell. You’ll never sell a book.” That’s fine, I told myself. I just want to get this monkey off my back. I didn’t care if I sold a lot of copies, but I didn’t go so far as to use that old chestnut, “If I can help only one person…” Blah, blah, blah, because nobody is buying that, it's just an excuse to go on Oprah and complain about your life. I really did want to help as many people as possible.
Then something happened; the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. What I was writing was real, but I was telling the story third person and calling it fiction (so as not to get sued by the guilty). Fiction, huh? I like this fiction so let’s make it pleasant.
As I finished the first book, I decided to share my happy ending in another book. I wrote the next book in the first person and that book was called Saltair. I LOVE SALTAIR SO MUCH. LOVE IT. You should read it. (It's on Amazon.) I've read it over 100 times, but I called it "editing". And then the story continued, and I wrote another book. Now I’m on my sixth book and it’s only been since COVID became super popular that I started writing books.
Do you know what happened then, besides a lot of hilarious, painful, truthful, fictional-autobiographic writing? I started to care. I really loved what I was writing and then I started to care that no one else was going to know about it, no one would read it. I wanted to sell a book. Oh, no. Now I’ve gone and ruined it.
I researched how to self-publish because I read the agonizing tweets of those who wait on publishing deals and how they are all out on a ledge. I just wanted to get it out there with as little fanfare as possible. Come to find out, fanfare is exactly what I need to get my book into people's hands, especially if I'm going to self-publish. I knew it was going to be nearly a full-time job to self-publish but since I already had one of those (a full-time job, that is), I spent every waking moment I wasn’t at work working on books. What I discovered is that I much prefer writing to publishing. Maybe I should write a book about that.
Then, because I’m an artist and clearly need something to slow me down, I decided I might want to illustrate my books. Yeah, I’m starting to lose the plot now. So I’ve set myself up, painted myself into a corner, did what I said I wasn’t going to do. I started to care about selling books and had to participate in all the million things it takes to do that. Every day I check Amazon to see if someone has bought or read my book. I check my website to see if anyone visited. I check fellow writers on Twitter to see if anyone, anyone at all is feeling encouraged. I try to do one illustration a day even though I'm very rusty at art. I designed and redesigned my book covers in PowerPoint.
That's right, PowerPoint.
Then I go over to Facebook where the “20 Books to 50K Group” is selling books like hotcakes and they’re all retired to Cabo San Lucas, waiting on Amazon to deposit the money in their PayPal while the hangers-on like me are wondering what I did wrong. I'll tell you what I did wrong; I refused to make an email list. I don't want emails - any emails - and I don't want to be the one who sends strangers emails about my latest book. A book list is solid advice, I just don't want to do it. So I probably won't be retiring to Cabo on all of my book money.
The upside is, I accomplished what I set out to do. I had two beta readers read my first book and they both identified with it so much, they were in tears, not realizing someone else went through what they did. That was my goal and I accomplished it; I made people cry.
Let me say it again: I wrote Ex-Wives’ Sunday School: Journal of a Failed Housewife to help people and I accomplished that goal. It’s not a great book and it needs an editor and a rewrite, but it helped them and thank you, Lord for that. (FYI, the name Ex-Wives' Sunday School is a misnomer because there is no Sunday school for ex-wives; I was out on the curb while the new wife is sitting in MY Sunday school class with MY family.)
Forgive my headline because it's projection; you may become a best-selling author. You might be one already and congrats! Somebody has to be the MC of the book world. But if I never am, I've come to grips with that. There are sadder things in this life than an author with books that can't get read in their lifetime. I still have hope I'll get read after I die so that's something.
Now it’s time to make new goals and set realistic ways to measure them, not fly off in multiple directions until I lose my way. My own personal MC Gerry told me that I should hire a literary manager to handle all of these problems. If I did, what would I do with the rest of my day?
Mare
Update: I was able to tell my aunt that Barnes and Noble picked up my sixth book, Sagebrush and have it on their website. I'm also working on books 9 and 10.
First published May 20, 2022. Copyright Mare Loch 2023 © All rights reserved.
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