The Writing Itself Must Be 99% Of Your Validation and Happiness: The Secret To Remaining a Contented Independent Author
You have written and self-published a novel you are proud of and think is good. Great! No matter which way you slice it, that is a major accomplishment. You should feel validated and happy . . . but you probably don't.
And that's where the problems begin.
You are seeking your validation and happiness in the wrong place. The validation and happiness must be almost entirely focused in the creation of your work and the opportunity of being able to put it out into the world.
What happens after that is anyone's guess.
You might be an amazing platform builder / marketer / social media star who launches an incredible campaign and end up selling a gazillion copies in a few months. Then again, you might end up selling a gazillion copies and then be ridiculed online for years afterward. Or your amazing media campaign might fall flat and go nowhere.
You might not do any marketing and get noticed by a publisher. That same publisher could make you the hottest writer in the world or they could screw you over with a cut-throat book contract.
You might do minimum marketing and build up respectable sales. You might to maximum marketing and have no sales at all.
Your work could end up wallowing in obscurity your whole life and be discovered only after you die. You work could bring you fame and riches in your life and then drift into obscurity after you die. Or your work could be obscure forever.
The possibilities are endless. In the realm of self-publishing, anything could happen. Anything. It's chaotic and unpredictable and it is precisely for this reason that you should not peg notions of validation or happiness on the success or failure of your book in the marketplace.
Validation and happiness must be almost entirely confined to the writing itself. Look there to find your happiness. That you have the chance to put your work out onto the market is a merely an added bonus. After that, be ambitious, strive for whatever notion of success you desire, but for God's sake don't let rankings or sales or media attention be the measures for your happiness.
I guarantee you will be setting yourself up for a disappointment, even if you surpass your wildest expectations in terms of success.
And that's where the problems begin.
You are seeking your validation and happiness in the wrong place. The validation and happiness must be almost entirely focused in the creation of your work and the opportunity of being able to put it out into the world.
What happens after that is anyone's guess.
You might be an amazing platform builder / marketer / social media star who launches an incredible campaign and end up selling a gazillion copies in a few months. Then again, you might end up selling a gazillion copies and then be ridiculed online for years afterward. Or your amazing media campaign might fall flat and go nowhere.
You might not do any marketing and get noticed by a publisher. That same publisher could make you the hottest writer in the world or they could screw you over with a cut-throat book contract.
You might do minimum marketing and build up respectable sales. You might to maximum marketing and have no sales at all.
Your work could end up wallowing in obscurity your whole life and be discovered only after you die. You work could bring you fame and riches in your life and then drift into obscurity after you die. Or your work could be obscure forever.
The possibilities are endless. In the realm of self-publishing, anything could happen. Anything. It's chaotic and unpredictable and it is precisely for this reason that you should not peg notions of validation or happiness on the success or failure of your book in the marketplace.
Validation and happiness must be almost entirely confined to the writing itself. Look there to find your happiness. That you have the chance to put your work out onto the market is a merely an added bonus. After that, be ambitious, strive for whatever notion of success you desire, but for God's sake don't let rankings or sales or media attention be the measures for your happiness.
I guarantee you will be setting yourself up for a disappointment, even if you surpass your wildest expectations in terms of success.
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Stephen wrote: "Writing is hell. Trying to express exactly what you see, what you hear and what you feel, what you understand for the rare moments of joy and triumph when you get it right - that is the only reward..."Hell is a strong word, Stephen; nevertheless, you are right. Like anything to which we ascribe a high value, the act of getting writing "right" is an exhausting challenge.
However, those rare moments of joy and triumph when you get it right would never materialize if the painstaking effort were not taken to achieve them. We suffer when we write, the same way a mountain climber suffers when they begin to scale some seemingly unscalable height, or the way an inventor suffers when their forty-second prototype blows up in their face.
But I experience a certain sense happiness and validation during the challenge, partly because the suffering I experience is of my own choosing, and partly because the process strengthens me and pushes me closer to those rare moments that you mention. Writing is how I look in the mirror and remember; I guess this is the deeper point I was trying to make in that post.
As for the media, boy that's a doozy. There isn't enough space here for me to even begin addressing that.
The success of the novel, without making the slightest dent on the dominant culture, made me realise that it is possible to give heart only to those who are like yourself. Now I want to give heart to those who feel suffocated by the mass media - the endless flattery that they are perfect as they are. I realise that my work will never appeal to vain, self-satisfied people. In the ideal world of If Only, my new novel, voting rights are restricted to the minority of citizens, people who can laugh at themselves because only they can have a sufficient understanding to make a judgement about anything. Most people don't want to face themselves when they read. They want to forget. I write for people who are not afraid to look into the mirror. Good novels are mirrors.