Good morning, all! I'm supposed to be adding to the next Beyond the Rails installment right now, but I'm not feeling it. I've learned long ago not to try to force creativity onto the page, so I've come here to talk to the writers among you because I have a question that some of you may be able to help me with. Here's the deal:
I've been writing for more than 50 years to entertain friends. Started in junior high school, and now I'm of retirement age, and I've never looked back. Those of you who write can probably say the same thing; if you have the gene, you have it for life. From my early twenties, I've carried a dream of being a published author. I've had a lot of dreams during my life: An NFL wide receiver; lead guitarist in an epic rock band; a dominant driver on the Formula I circuit. But of all of them, being a published author was the one that was the most realistic and attainable.
Then in the mid-nineties, I began to put together some work that was head and shoulders above what I had done before. Some corner in the development of my writing style and command of a plotline had been turned. I began to approach professionals in the publishing industry. For a decade I submitted that first novel, and the four that came behind, to possibly hundreds of agents and publishers. "This isn't quite what we're looking for," came the replies, or more usually a photocopied rejection slip, or more usually than that, nothing. I once sent a three-pound manuscript to New York (from California) on a Monday, and received the rejection slip on Thursday. The receptionist must have had the mailman wait while she copied my address onto it. One agency, obviously having just placed their first book, sent me an ad for it, with the assurance that reading that book would show me the way how professional writers developed their stories... Good grief!
Having tired, as everyone must, of pounding my head against a brick wall, I stopped submitting, and accepted that my work was, to use a baseball metaphor, Minor League; good enough to entertain a few people who knew me personally and dug what I was doing, but not good enough to pay for. With that acceptance came a certain contentment. Those five novels, plus whatever else I might produce, would make a fine legacy for my grandchildren, and now that I was no longer writing for publication, in other words, the pressure was off, my writing improved.
Then a couple of things happened. As I noted in my introductory remarks, I could no sooner quit writing than I could quit breathing. However, I wanted to leave the novel form behind with all its unreasonable demands for basically every waking hour of free time, so I began to teach myself the art of the short story. Not long into that process, a good friend led me to the steampunk genre, and I knew I was home. Beyond the Rails was born. I set up a blog where I posted the stories that rolled out of my keyboard, and developed a score or so of followers, and that was enough.
Or so I thought. Those followers, in their innocent enthusiasm, began to suggest publishing the stories as collections. They are also clamoring for a novel, but that's for another post. The point is, as a member of writing.com as well as The Steampunk Writers & Artists Guild, I am frequently exposed to ads for self-publishing sites. These have been around for a while, and I'm probably the last person to notice them, but a particularly nice one from CreateSpace caught my eye, I read the details, and decided to place the much-complimented Beyond the Rails before the public at large. Their instructions were easy, and the interface was user-friendly; all I had to do was choose the template I wanted, cut-and-paste the Word document, and there before my astonished eyes was the book I'd always dreamed of with a button below that would post it on amazon.com for all the world to see. Could you resist pushing that button?
Me either, and that brings me to my question which is for everyone who has self-published their own work. See, the book has been up for two-and-a-half weeks now, but a few days ago, I found myself regretting that I had done it, and wishing I could undo it. That's passing now, and I'm getting back into it, in fact I'm planning a giveaway promotion on goodreads.com to start next week, but I want to know if this is common, and if it is, what do you think causes it? Is it that self-publishing is an admission of failure, that I couldn't write well enough to catch the attention of a "real" publishing firm? Is it fear that, now that my work is on the world's biggest website alongside Graham Greene and Gail Carriger, that I'll be exposed as bumbling hack and laughed out of town? Or is it simply that fear that comes with any big step, like signing the papers that commit you to buying a house? Any ideas? Because I don't like depression, and my usual approach to the first onset of any such feeling is to bulldoze it like Ray Lewis taking out Darren Sproles, and if this turns up again, I'd like to have a handle on it!
Well, that's all I've got this week. Any takers?
I've been writing for more than 50 years to entertain friends. Started in junior high school, and now I'm of retirement age, and I've never looked back. Those of you who write can probably say the same thing; if you have the gene, you have it for life. From my early twenties, I've carried a dream of being a published author. I've had a lot of dreams during my life: An NFL wide receiver; lead guitarist in an epic rock band; a dominant driver on the Formula I circuit. But of all of them, being a published author was the one that was the most realistic and attainable.
Then in the mid-nineties, I began to put together some work that was head and shoulders above what I had done before. Some corner in the development of my writing style and command of a plotline had been turned. I began to approach professionals in the publishing industry. For a decade I submitted that first novel, and the four that came behind, to possibly hundreds of agents and publishers. "This isn't quite what we're looking for," came the replies, or more usually a photocopied rejection slip, or more usually than that, nothing. I once sent a three-pound manuscript to New York (from California) on a Monday, and received the rejection slip on Thursday. The receptionist must have had the mailman wait while she copied my address onto it. One agency, obviously having just placed their first book, sent me an ad for it, with the assurance that reading that book would show me the way how professional writers developed their stories... Good grief!
Having tired, as everyone must, of pounding my head against a brick wall, I stopped submitting, and accepted that my work was, to use a baseball metaphor, Minor League; good enough to entertain a few people who knew me personally and dug what I was doing, but not good enough to pay for. With that acceptance came a certain contentment. Those five novels, plus whatever else I might produce, would make a fine legacy for my grandchildren, and now that I was no longer writing for publication, in other words, the pressure was off, my writing improved.
Then a couple of things happened. As I noted in my introductory remarks, I could no sooner quit writing than I could quit breathing. However, I wanted to leave the novel form behind with all its unreasonable demands for basically every waking hour of free time, so I began to teach myself the art of the short story. Not long into that process, a good friend led me to the steampunk genre, and I knew I was home. Beyond the Rails was born. I set up a blog where I posted the stories that rolled out of my keyboard, and developed a score or so of followers, and that was enough.
Or so I thought. Those followers, in their innocent enthusiasm, began to suggest publishing the stories as collections. They are also clamoring for a novel, but that's for another post. The point is, as a member of writing.com as well as The Steampunk Writers & Artists Guild, I am frequently exposed to ads for self-publishing sites. These have been around for a while, and I'm probably the last person to notice them, but a particularly nice one from CreateSpace caught my eye, I read the details, and decided to place the much-complimented Beyond the Rails before the public at large. Their instructions were easy, and the interface was user-friendly; all I had to do was choose the template I wanted, cut-and-paste the Word document, and there before my astonished eyes was the book I'd always dreamed of with a button below that would post it on amazon.com for all the world to see. Could you resist pushing that button?
Me either, and that brings me to my question which is for everyone who has self-published their own work. See, the book has been up for two-and-a-half weeks now, but a few days ago, I found myself regretting that I had done it, and wishing I could undo it. That's passing now, and I'm getting back into it, in fact I'm planning a giveaway promotion on goodreads.com to start next week, but I want to know if this is common, and if it is, what do you think causes it? Is it that self-publishing is an admission of failure, that I couldn't write well enough to catch the attention of a "real" publishing firm? Is it fear that, now that my work is on the world's biggest website alongside Graham Greene and Gail Carriger, that I'll be exposed as bumbling hack and laughed out of town? Or is it simply that fear that comes with any big step, like signing the papers that commit you to buying a house? Any ideas? Because I don't like depression, and my usual approach to the first onset of any such feeling is to bulldoze it like Ray Lewis taking out Darren Sproles, and if this turns up again, I'd like to have a handle on it!
Well, that's all I've got this week. Any takers?