I had a really rocky day Thursday as far as confidence in writing went. I read an article that made me think I was the only indie author not making bank. My sales are paltry, but I thought they were fairly normal for someone only in it a year. The person writing the blog had only three books out for 18 months and made $36,000 in those 18 months. And she was talking about how little that was.
Not only was it a blow to me, but I had a story to finish.
How do you push through and keep writing on days that you’d rather have a few tumblers of St. Germaine’s over ice and call it good?
I’m not even sure how to respond to this. There are definitely days I don’t push through and I wallow in self-pity. Then, there are days I am thankful for all I have accomplished and I work through it. I imagine even those who are successful have the same motivational issues. It’s just plain hard to sit down and write. Sometimes, even when I have an idea to write about, I don’t want to write. I’d rather do almost anything than write (read, watch tv, facebook, go out and play in the snow, yeah, right!, or even twiddle my thumbs) In the long run, we just have to make a decision to do it, whether we’re into it or not. It’s all about looking at the long term goals. Do we want to be an author who can be taken seriously? Or do we just want to be mediocre all our lives?
I haven’t been in the game long enough to know the all the details of the money side of indie publishing, but that seems like a lot of money and likely not a representative of the market. FOR that author to be complaining shows they are either shame-bragging or clueless how this comes across to their audience. That’s 100K a year. Thank your readers and move on. (I wrote more but deleted it….without reading the article I don’t want to comment on it further).
Just like we shouldn’t directly compare our writing to another author, we should definitely avoid comparing paystubs. When the dumptruck of money arrives in my driveway some day, I will be pleasantly surprised, but it is not an expectation.
With my current project I have had up and down weeks and scrapped my beginning after letting a group of strangers shred it on the internet. To cheer myself up I read those stories that did work, that people enjoyed and told me they enjoyed them, be they family, friends, betas, or professors. You got this far with some encouragement, hang on to that and push forward. We want to read what you write next.
Sorry Dave, I mispoke in my blog which I did blearily after the game last night. She made 36,000 in 18 months not three. She did say she wasn’t bragging; she was trying to make a point that you can live off of indie writing. But Dang! That money would be really helpful in any situation! I can email you the article privately if you’re interested. I didn’t want to link it since I’m bitching about it
I’ll change my post to read correctly.
Other than checking emails or looking up a date/fact, I try to stay off the internet until I’m done my writing goals. Otherwise, I always seem to come across something negative that depresses me and affects my goals for the day. On the days I’m not so self-disciplined and I do get depressed from the internet, I tend to switch over to other writerly things that need to be done outside of actual writing (getting caught up on emails, updating my website, things like that).
Ooh, I like Holly’s advice to stay off the Internet until she’s done with her writing goals.
I’m like Dave, above, in that the money part of it isn’t even a factor in my writing right now. Those numbers are really pretty good sounding. I’d like to make some money writing. It would definitely feel good. Lord knows I could use it, but TIME is my biggest challenge. I still need my day job, so with everything else that needs to get done time is limited.
After pushing and pushing in November to blog every day and also work on my story, I still found my total word count to be a little depressing. It was a lot better than I had been doing, but still paltry compared to “real writers.” At this rate I’ll finish a novel in about three to five years. Haha. I don’t want to wallow in self-doubt but I am going to wallow from time to time.
So to keep going (which I am trying to do right now) I find the following helpful: A.) Don’t spend too much time comparing myself to anybody else. This is in total agreement with Holly’s advice. Just set goals and meet goals and then do other stuff. B.) No matter how much of a struggle it is right now. It can get better. I can get better. I can learn more about how it all works. I can make the most of what I write. The only way it won’t happen is if I stop. Breaks are going to happen, but no stopping!
Yoda says, “Do or do not. There is no try.”
As far as getting writing done, there really is “do or do not.” You either do it or you won’t. Just write. As far as success goes, there should always be, “try.” Keep trying and keep trying and keep trying. Because failure has almost always been part of success, so try you must. Always.
(Wow, St. Germaine’s over ice sounds pretty darn good. Maybe later.)