Writers Write
In the face of my objective failure as a writer (I mean, I'm being brutally frank, here), it's mostly confined to my utter failure to find the audience for my work.
Maybe that's on me to have written horror-adjacent thriller-type stories that didn't have an audience, or maybe the thrillers I wrote weren't thrilling enough to captivate thriller readers.
Or the stories I wrote didn't motivate the few people who read them to enthusiastically get behind them and talk about them (I liken it to someone liking a story, without necessary loving it enough to hype it).
It could also be that my dogged indie streak kneecapped me, and that I should've pushed harder into trad back when it might've mattered (choose the time period you wish -- 1990s? 2000s?)
Of course, there's also the reality that plenty of midlist authors are out there twisting in the wind, so even if I'd shrewdly carved a trad path for myself back in the day, I'd be screwed over yet another way.
The point is, I believe in my work, even if nobody else does.
I think it's solid, even as I know probably every writer thinks that, if only to sustain themselves. I've never put out a subpar book, and never will. Should I ever get to that point where I'm writing below my ability or am unable to write well anymore, I'll just stop writing, and put an end to the entire enterprise.
Another possibility is that, as a lifelong misfit, there simply isn't much of an audience for my work, or the few readers out there who might like my work are also the sort who don't praise work they like. They just quietly enjoy it, and that's that. I'm not a norm, never will be. I'm in my own world, literally and figuratively, cursed (or blessed? But, truly, cursed) to always be consigned to the fringes, without possibility of broader acceptance for my work.
I continue to get periodic sales, and those are always nice, wherever they're coming from. Rarer still, I might get someone who reaches out and tells me they enjoyed the book(s). I tend to get decent reviews for my work, so I think that speaks to the work's quality.
However, I fear there's really no audience for my work. I used to chalk it up to the vagaries of the Horror genre -- I know what I write isn't what most Horror boosters pretend to read. Maybe too conceptual? Too cerebral? Too literary? Not sure.
But my SF and Fantasy work isn't getting read, either. My feeling was that those types of genre readers are always looking for stuff to read. Maybe not so much.
And that's the other possibility I've pounded into the ground in a dozen or more blog posts: people have literal tons of choices of both things to read and also other things to do besides reading.
It's not that I'm at odds with writing, the profession I've dedicated myself to for over 30 years. That's part of the curse -- I'll likely write until I die. However, the one true joy of writing beyond the creative act itself is to write something a reader appreciates. When that doesn't happen, when there's just nothing, it's dispiriting. Am I just talking to myself all this time? Is that all it is?
My own kids don't/won't read my books. I think about that sometimes -- like when I'm eventually dead, maybe they'll read my books and learn something about their old man they never knew in life. Or, likelier, they simply won't read my books, and I'll slide into true oblivion.
This isn't self-pitying mewling, here; it's simply the awareness that I have failed in what I set out to do, if part of the goal was to find readers for my work, let alone actual fans of my work.
After over a dozen years and having written 20 books across three genres, I've not found my audience, my readers, or enough fans (there are a couple of you out there, I know, but you are few and far between). What else am I to conclude from that? All I wanted, from childhood onward, was to write things people might enjoy reading, and I fear I failed at that seemingly simple goal.
Maybe that's on me to have written horror-adjacent thriller-type stories that didn't have an audience, or maybe the thrillers I wrote weren't thrilling enough to captivate thriller readers.
Or the stories I wrote didn't motivate the few people who read them to enthusiastically get behind them and talk about them (I liken it to someone liking a story, without necessary loving it enough to hype it).
It could also be that my dogged indie streak kneecapped me, and that I should've pushed harder into trad back when it might've mattered (choose the time period you wish -- 1990s? 2000s?)
Of course, there's also the reality that plenty of midlist authors are out there twisting in the wind, so even if I'd shrewdly carved a trad path for myself back in the day, I'd be screwed over yet another way.
The point is, I believe in my work, even if nobody else does.
I think it's solid, even as I know probably every writer thinks that, if only to sustain themselves. I've never put out a subpar book, and never will. Should I ever get to that point where I'm writing below my ability or am unable to write well anymore, I'll just stop writing, and put an end to the entire enterprise.
Another possibility is that, as a lifelong misfit, there simply isn't much of an audience for my work, or the few readers out there who might like my work are also the sort who don't praise work they like. They just quietly enjoy it, and that's that. I'm not a norm, never will be. I'm in my own world, literally and figuratively, cursed (or blessed? But, truly, cursed) to always be consigned to the fringes, without possibility of broader acceptance for my work.
I continue to get periodic sales, and those are always nice, wherever they're coming from. Rarer still, I might get someone who reaches out and tells me they enjoyed the book(s). I tend to get decent reviews for my work, so I think that speaks to the work's quality.
However, I fear there's really no audience for my work. I used to chalk it up to the vagaries of the Horror genre -- I know what I write isn't what most Horror boosters pretend to read. Maybe too conceptual? Too cerebral? Too literary? Not sure.
But my SF and Fantasy work isn't getting read, either. My feeling was that those types of genre readers are always looking for stuff to read. Maybe not so much.
And that's the other possibility I've pounded into the ground in a dozen or more blog posts: people have literal tons of choices of both things to read and also other things to do besides reading.
It's not that I'm at odds with writing, the profession I've dedicated myself to for over 30 years. That's part of the curse -- I'll likely write until I die. However, the one true joy of writing beyond the creative act itself is to write something a reader appreciates. When that doesn't happen, when there's just nothing, it's dispiriting. Am I just talking to myself all this time? Is that all it is?
My own kids don't/won't read my books. I think about that sometimes -- like when I'm eventually dead, maybe they'll read my books and learn something about their old man they never knew in life. Or, likelier, they simply won't read my books, and I'll slide into true oblivion.
This isn't self-pitying mewling, here; it's simply the awareness that I have failed in what I set out to do, if part of the goal was to find readers for my work, let alone actual fans of my work.
After over a dozen years and having written 20 books across three genres, I've not found my audience, my readers, or enough fans (there are a couple of you out there, I know, but you are few and far between). What else am I to conclude from that? All I wanted, from childhood onward, was to write things people might enjoy reading, and I fear I failed at that seemingly simple goal.
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