What being a successful, working author means to me

At the beginning of the month I had to go see a doctor about a small issue I was having. Everything was okay, but I was told I had to take it easy and cut back on a lot of the stuff I normally do for a few months. So stuff like, say, lugging my laptop down to the bus stop to make my way to a coffee shop for a good ol’ writing session was no longer possible. While most of those who knew of my plight were sympathetic, the one thing I heard that drove me nuts was this: At least you don’t work.

Wait, what? This wasn’t the first time this particular person has said this, but I guess after a hundred or so times you just can’t brush it off anymore. I don’t know about all the other writer’s out there, but I certainly don’t sit around, think of an idea, and then BOOM! a completed novel comes out. If it were that easy, there’d be a lot of books out there.

I’m not even sure if this person would be saying this stuff if I was part of the big 6, because to some people you are not a writer unless you are the next J.K. Rowling. And I can’t even try to explain how Fifty Shades of Grey was originally an eBook that blew up into this whole thing, because I still have to deal with the fact that there are paperbacks out there now. To some, it’s almost like the eBook never came beforehand. It’s the chicken or egg conundrum solved.

The process of how most authors get into the bookstores is also eluding to some. They don’t get that you need to get an agent, and then that agent tries to get a publisher, and even with all of the steps neatly followed it still doesn’t mean you’re going to have Stephanie Meyer’s money. That selling books at all is a huge, major, holy-crap-yay factor in even staying a “real” published author.

So why am I telling you all this? It’s simple, because I like to think that a successful, working author is someone who put in the time to finish a novel and shared with the world in some way or another. Be it they went Indie and they were a hit, did okay, did okay but want to go a different way, or (like me) you’ve sold very few copies of the book but, hey,  someone read it. Or, maybe you went the traditional way, got all the way to seeing your name on a shelf in a book store, but you didn’t sell enough books to stay there. It doesn’t matter. Writing is hard, editing is harder, and no matter how you hit the “submit” button, getting your work out there is the hardest and scariest part there is.