The Whole Shabang! How does it work?
Wow! I’ve published and sold a few books. Cool! Reflecting back, what were the key aspects of the experience of writing, the editing, engaging trusted agents to edit, accepting/rejecting feedback, processing inputs, and finally taking the leap of faith. Here is what I think happened:
1. I had this idea for a story. I loved the setting. I lived in Cyprus and embraced the history of the people and the trials they endured.
2. I wrote. I took an adventure into the past and created characters to help me tell a story about a place, its people and its future. I brought what I thought was passion into the telling of this story and relived the experiences I had with the people of Cyprus.
3. I took some advice from some successful authors that I admire and I wrote…the way I thought they would have and the way that I knew I could.
4. I discovered that my writing and my imagination didn’t match patterns of good grammer and continuity of tense. I learned to respect the talent of the authors I admire even more.
5. I took a break…but not long enough. The story wasn’t ready. I had trusted agents tell me what I should do and I was impatient.
6. I accepted feedback. Sometimes it was painful but I respected the honesty of it and attempted to adjust what I thought the story needed to be to reach a broad audience and still convey the messages I thought were important.
7. I must have read what I’d written entirely too many times as I incorporated the suggested edits of my trusted agents. I probably even mixed up versions of the edited copies and will someday discover that the “real” final version was not the one that I published.
8. I remained impatient and wanted to move on. I wanted to move forward in a way that I wanted the setting for this story to find a foothold to move forward from. I had and still have hope that a reading audience will be able to look past the shortcomings of a freshman “Indie” author and grasp the core of what is possible for a better future.
9. I learned that once you actually publish what you labor over as an “Indie” author, that there is nobody but you to promote the fruits of that labor.
10. Finally, I learned that what one writes and publishes is like a son or daughter. We can only hope that we raised them right.
Happy reading!
