My Writing Journey Continues…

Part 12

There’s a quote I have read that says... “Choose your hard.”

Marriage is hard, Divorce is hard – choose your hard

Obesity is hard, being fit is hard - choose your hard.

Being in debt is hard… being financially disciplined is hard - choose your hard

Life will never be easy.  It will always be hard. But we can choose our hard.

As a writer I’m adding:

Self-publishing is hard. Traditional publishing is hard. Choose your hard.

For now, I have chosen the self-publishing hard.

And is it ever.

Overwhelm is often and challenging.

There is editing, proofreading, cover design, (finding and paying people to do the tasks, waiting in line ‘til they can fit you into their schedule - the more eyes you can have read your book, the better in terms of finding those recalcitrant errors) … uploading to the distribution platforms, pricing...

 Then all the other side stuff…

Promotion, running ads, maintaining a social media presence, writing blogs & newsletters,

 And don’t forget to do things that will up-skill your own writing.

As well as read other books and encourage fellow writers.

Then find time to write more books,

Self publishing requires lots of ball juggling.

There are so many balls to juggle.

It’s no wonder a few of them hit the ground from time to time.

One of balls I have dropped has been blogging, which I find takes so much time and thought away from what I should be doing – writing more books.

There’s no one size fits all approach to the writing journey and a plethora of so-called experts keen to have to have me sign up and pay up to learn their secrets, that are all but guaranteed to have me hitting the best-seller lists in no time at all. Or so they say.

They will promote those handful of people that have had great success and imply that it will be the same for me. (There will be a disclaimer in small print though)

The array of experts is overwhelmingly mind boggling because as soon as I start searching for help, ads get pushed at me from every side. They all sound like something I should be doing…. I could do courses forever and a day and still not crack 'the code'. I wish I could say I’ve finally discovered the holy grail of self-publishing, the road-map, the blue print, but in all honesty, what works for one author in one genre won’t necessarily work for another author even in the same genre. 

It’s hit and miss. Trial and error. Probably more error than anything.

It’s very easy to throw my hands up in the air and give up. But that’s all part of the process.

It takes determination, persistence, courage, finances... and dumb luck.

So I will keep on keeping on.