This one is going to be me bitchin'. . . a little.
See, I started writing The Blood Gem on a whim back in 2008. I think it was 2008.
I've been writing since I was a young. I started with writing very bad fanfic (before fanfic was a thing) for the BESTEST movie ever, Aliens. Then over the years I took about a billion creative writing classes, joined a few critique groups, and hired a writing coach.
But like most writers, I struggle with the required getting one's ass in the chair and writing consistently.
Blood Gem was born out of a bet. I wagered with a coworker $100 bucks over who could write 3,000 words a week. If you hit the word count, you got to keep $20. The loser would have to fork over the money to the winner. If we both won, the cash stayed in the kitty.
I won every week. Money is a big ass motivator for me.
So the evolution of Blood Gem went from - something to do during office down time to oh shoot this could be a book for real to this is gonna be my first fully finished book.
At first I thought I would go the traditional route ( and I still will at some point). You know, query letters, finding an agent, tons of rejections, yadda, yadda. The idea seemed daunting, really daunting, but I had the dream of being a real "author".
Then a life coach (yeah I believe in the self-improvement thing) said, "why not self-publish, I just worked with an author that is making $20,000 grand a month."
I had always pictured the life of a writer being one of the starving artist. Starving ain't sexy, so I always wanted to have a secured stream of income before indulging in writing full time.
But that $20,000 a month got my effin attention.
My journey of self-publishing was born.
And my journey of procrastination continues. . .
With traditional publishing - lots of things are done for the writer (in theory) - like marketing and promotion.
For indie writer - all that additional work is on your back.
I spent a good portion of my day today mapping out my book marketing/promotion to-do list. My eyes hurt, I have a headache and I haven't done any writing yet. I'm likely doing this all ass-backward. I feel like it is all pointless. Nobody is gonna see this anyway. I'm cranky and want to throw a tantrum.
Instead of doing one of things on my list-- writing this post-- I'd much rather be watching the Walking Dead. I hear Rick is getting out of hand and my DVR is calling me.
I can think of a few other things I'd rather be doing. . . like eating, napping, watching the episode of V I've had on my DVR for over a year . . .
. . . but I want to be a successful author more.
Work hard. Work hard. Work hard and smart Michelle.
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