J.A. Konrath

I've had a number of careers.  In one, I was a professional speaker for
eleven years.  At age 5, I determined I was
going to be a speaker.  The only thing
that stood in my way was my knee-knocking, throat-locking, I-had-rather-die
fear of speaking in public.  It took
thirty-three years to whip that one, but I did – how I did it will be the topic
of another blog.  This post is about
something else.

In November, 1986, I was scheduled to
speak at the Unity Church in Missoula, Montana. 
I arrived a day early, checked into the Red Lion Inn, which was perched
on the west bank of the Clark Fork River, and spent the rest of the afternoon
exploring downtown Missoula and the campus of the University of Montana. 

Normally, I’m not a morning runner.   I’m
the guy who runs late at night, the one you see and think, that’s what drinking will do to you. 
However, I knew I had to run early because I was leaving for Santa Barbara
after the day’s speaking engagement, and there would be no other time to run.

As I crawled out of the warm bed, I
considered crawling back in, more than once, before I finished dressing and
headed out into the chilly Missoula morning. 
I jogged north, a couple of blocks to the footbridge that crossed the
river, and landed on the campus.  As I
pounded over the bridge, thoughts of the bed finally faded, and I settled
seriously into the run.  On the campus, I
turned back south and began skirting the edge of the UM Grizzlies’ practice
football field. 

Without notice, the wind stopped
blowing, there was a moment of hushed expectation, and then the sky was filled
with the largest snowflakes this southern boy had ever seen. 

I stopped at the edge of the field, the
only person in the world, and a story sprang full blown into my mind.  I saw a Vietnam Vet, a retired helicopter pilot;
enroll, with his son, at the University of Montana.  Then I saw the two of them on the practice
field, throwing a football, kicking, catching, and trying to forget the loss of
the woman they both loved.  I saw the
Grizzlies’ head coach watching them, and I saw him recruit both of them to play
for the Grizzlies.  I saw, Josh Edwards,
at age forty-four, become the starting quarterback for the University of
Montana Grizzlies.  I saw all of that as
I stood there in the first snowfall of the year.  Finally, I shook my head and started running
again.

I spoke that day in Missoula, the following
day in Santa Barbara, and I wound up the week in Spokane.  In spite of my schedule, I couldn’t shake
what I had seen, so I started writing it, first on a legal pad, later on my
computer.  Though I was just writing for
myself, I gave the story a title.  I
called it Fourth
and Forever.  When I finished
it, I determined that it was good. 
Convinced that everyone would feel the same way, I began sending query
letters to agents and publishers.  I soon
found that everyone didn’t share my enthusiasm for the story.  The bottom line is, I accumulated 412
rejections. 

I learned my lesson.  I kept writing, but I stopped sending query
letters.  I wrote three more novels, and
they all joined Fourth and Forever in my desk drawer.  There they stayed until Jeff Bezos hadn’t sold
me a Kindle.  A year later it dawned on
me that I could publish my books on Kindle, and Jeff would not send me a
rejection letter – in fact, he would pay me 70% of everything he got for my
books.

A couple of months after I published my
second book, I realized that I knew the name of everyone who had bought one of
my books, and I’m no memory wizard.  That’s
when I realized that I needed help, so I began looking for it.  That’s when I found Joe Konrath and A
Newbies Guide to Self Publishing. 
  I devoured it and wanted more.  It didn’t take long to find Joe’s blog,
and I was hooked.   

If you are an indie writer or want to
be an indie writer, next to writing, reading Joe Konrath is the single best
thing you can do for yourself.  However,
I hasten to point out that you won’t meet Joe Konrath by reading $100,000,
the blog he posted last Wednesday.  You’ll
meet Joe and you’ll discover why I said “…reading Joe Konrath is the single
best thing you do for yourself,” when you read Reality Check,
the blog he posted this morning, Friday the 13th, 2012.  Read that, reread it, and make a point of reading
it at least once a month for the rest of the year.  Look for this passage in the post, and brand
it in your head and your heart:

“Yes, I've worked hard. I still do. But
no one deserves success…”   

When you’re not reading Reality
Check and A Newbies Guide to Self Publishing, write, write, write…. Then,
to borrow a phrase from Zig Ziglar,
“I’ll see you, at the top.”