writing

You’ve probably never heard of Anna del C Dye. I hadn’t until I sat next to her on a panel and listened to her talk about her books in heavily accented English. She talked about the stories she’d loved writing, the process of working with a self-publishing company, and the enormous confidence she’d gained by proving to herself that she could write a book in her adopted language. Anna also talked about the satisfaction she receives by hearing from people who have loved her books. I’ve never seen Anna’s books. I can’t speak to their literary quality. I know for certain that Anna herself was a good and admirable person who has worked really hard to achieve a personal dream.

You are also unlikely to have heard of Jill Hancock Reeder. I sat next to her at a book signing. She set out her children’s book about surrogate pregnancy next to my picture book about impulsivity. Jill was supremely qualified to know how to explain surrogacy to children. She has three kids of her own and has been a surrogate for other people three times. She decided to have her 12 year old daughter do the illustrations for the book as a family project. Her book is well known in the online surrogacy communities and is hailed as both useful and necessary. She sells very few books to the general public, they glance, refuse to meet her eyes, and walk away.

Since you’re here on my blog, you probably have heard of me. I self-published a children’s picture book. I take it with me when I do appearances and sell copies here and there. The project was a story my daughter needed and then published so that I could pay the artist. I’ve paid the artist now, but still haven’t made any money on it myself.

These are the faces of self-published authors. I’ve met many, and I expect I will meet many more as I continue to attend conventions and events. With only a few exceptions I have found self-published authors to be intelligent people with solid reasons for choosing the path that they took. They have their fair share of insecurity and eagerness to promote their work, however I see that among commercially published writers as well. In the end we are all writers with stories that we want to share and I see no value in trying to enforce a social class system based upon publication venue. Commercial publishing has as many toxic people as self publishing.

It is possible, even probable, that my self-publishing background has impacted my views on this. I’m inclined to consider self-publishers as good people because I want to be considered in that light myself. Hopefully I will retain this viewpoint even after I have a project published commercially. I know many commercially published people do hold this view. Anna talked about them and was extremely grateful to the ones she had met. I am always glad to meet writers whose love for story is more important than an imagined status system.

My current writing project is a memoir in essay form about my struggles to balance work, family, spirituality, community, and self. Most of the essays that will go into the book were originally blog entries here on One Cobble, but they’ve been revised and I’ve also drafted some completely new material as well. Right now I’m about half way through a revision of the entire book. Last Fall I slapped all the essays into place so that I could view the book as a whole project rather than as scattered pieces. This was the right call, because as I go through I’m adjusting essays and information flow depending upon what came before and what will come next. Sometimes this is simply lightly going over an essay, other times it means drafting connecting material from scratch, and once it meant completely scrapping an essay entirely.

Working on the project is taking up most of my available brain space. Family and business chores are still front and center, but in the remainder of my time I’m either working on this revision, avoiding working on the revision, or deliberately taking a break from the revision. The avoidance is almost always triggered by thoughts of how the writing sucks, I’m not saying what I mean, or that no one will care to read it anyway. The most discouraging thing is that for all the emotional energy I’m pouring into the project (and into avoiding the project) I really thought I would be done with the revision by now. Some of the delay is caused by higher priority tasks needing my full attention, but I’ve also wasted time. I know I have. I often question whether the project itself is a waste of time. It impacts my stress level. It takes up time I could be spending on other things. It uses up creative energy and fills the corners of my mind in which I percolate blog entries. Like any creative project, it is expensive.

I will finish this project. Whether or not the completed work ever sees the light of day in print, whether or not anyone else ever reads it or cares about it, whether or not the work is good, I need to know that I saw it through to the end. This book is important to me. The learning processes associated with writing the book, revising the book, and submitting the book to agents are all important to me. None of it is going to be easy, but it is all something I want to do. So I’ll keep at it until the work is done.

I was feeling tired, frustrated, and a bit burned out with all the tasks on my To Do list. I resigned myself to wasting the afternoon, but for some reason picked up my current writing project instead. An hour later I have 5000 more words of rough draft and I feel better about everything.

Why on earth does it keep surprising me that writing makes me feel better about my life? Why doesn’t that knowledge make it easier for me to pick up projects when they’ve lain idle for a week? You hear me brain? You have some stupid stuck in there.