Why Didn't I Say Something Sooner?

I experienced a moment of pride recently when a few close friends discovered my books. You see, I didn’t announce Humanastra to my friends and family. In fact, I’d only mentioned it to a few people after I’d published my first book. I suppose I didn’t want my friends to feel obligated to read my stories, especially knowing that only a small population of us are science fiction fans. Or perhaps I worried that they’d brush it off and say “Oh, this is his new flavor of the week.” To be fair, my hobbies are numerous and ever-changing, so I couldn’t blame them if they felt that way. But to my surprise, they didn’t.

“I can’t believe you write books! I wouldn’t know where to begin!” one friend said. Her comment caused me to blush a bit. She’s a musician also (a much better one than I), so she understood my need for a creative outlet. To me, writing is something I just DO. I don’t pat myself on the back for spouting a few thousand words, but it was an eye opener to hear what an accomplishment that was. I felt admired, and it was a welcome sensation.

“So wait… You wrote TWO books in one year?” another friend remarked when I told him I’d started writing last February. He seemed astonished, asking about the self-publishing process and how long the Humanastra series would be. I told him I had a lot of ideas I wanted to express, and he was respectfully surprised at my ambitions. Another friend even referred to me as “RJ Grey”, which isn’t my real name. That was another wonderful feeling, to be recognized.

So I suppose the lesson here is that 1) either I don’t know my friends very well (which I hope isn’t the case), or 2) the modest approach was all wrong. Maybe I should have included more people in my activities earlier on. I think I wanted to ensure that I was onto something before sharing it, but now that I’ve released two books, I have a leg to stand on (or two?). I wrote with minimal support from those closest to me, but their enthusiasm makes me push even harder.

“Life is a wall, you have to climb it by pushing others to climb over and you will be pushed as well." ― Bernard Kelvin Clive