Why You Go Ahead and Publish

You've completed your novel! No mean feat! For first timers, it feels like it's in the bag, so you start looking for the lucky agent/publisher who has the opportunity of a lifetime to cash in on your bestseller.

High as a kite on aspiration, your fingers float over the keyboard. You type something to the effect of 'publishing' into that search bar.

Huh, editing... Well, I guess I did that. I ran spell checker after every chapter for sure! Professional? Yikes, how about self-editing? Ouch, steep curve... No wonder some people pay someone else.

Formatting... (And you thought editing was a curve...)

Beta readers? Can I trust my precious to just anyone? If I like it, someone else will, right? No guaranteed feedback. Should I get an NDA? 

Brain freeze! Wait, I'm drinking hot coffee...

Let's suppose you get past the intimidation of the basics. You formatted, edited, read it to the point where there's nothing left to nitpick. Still, something just never feels right. You find a misspelled word in the first chapter--ugh, it's ruined. You edit again-- ugh, you hate that dialogue, that character, why did you give that a pass? You dismantle, you rearrange, you rewrite.

Guess what? You're probably ready. For what, I can't say. If you don't have the confidence yet to put a value on it, you have to know that most authors,,even best selling ones, never love their work when they took the leap of faith and never looked at it since. They often need fans to even help them revive the memory of it.

Wait, shouldn't they know it like the back of their hand? Funny how accurate that saying is. Try drawing the back of your hand from memory. No peeking. Even when I tell you to draw it while looking, you'll probably look constantly as you do. Let's say you have a photographic memory or you truly memorized the back of your hand because you're kind of an asshole (don't worry; I've done it just to debunk an argument too). The recall of even a pristine memory is often very clinical, devoid of emotion in order to exact perfect recall of the visual. Something gives. Your mood, your confidence, your nerve, your dog ate your hard drive, what novel? The point is, your novel is not sentient. Although I would love to see you write a book to that effect, you're probably looking for an out that isn't really rational.

Name any famous author. Their work is shit. What about--? Yup, them too. Because any famous author is just not someone else's favorite. There is no universally beloved author. None that come close even have an entire don't of work that can do no wrong. They've cashed in on their fame, become hated on Twitter... Well, you would trade in fame for a small, loving fan base anyway. Ooo, you want a hugbox? Do you think trolls are less evil when they find you? Oh ho ho, no no no no...

I'm not here to frighten you away from this. To make fans and friends, the work has to get out there and that means trolls and assholes too. You'll get passive aggressives that insinuate how similar your work is to someone else (coughripoffcough) too. Oh, give you a troll over the crusty grey assholes any day. 

Just ask yourself if you're ever going to burn this manuscript or if you'll pine over the what-ifs. Ask yourself if you're truly a storyteller or just a rabid fanchild. 

Why do you publish? Because you know its value. Because you're ready. Because you have more stories to tell and this one is just the beginning of a pattern of completion you're setting. I can't give you that answer, but in this day and age, with all that's available to you?

Because you fucking can.

You can also pull it, learn from it, grow from it. This is for YOU to decide. Scary, wonderful, terrible, terrific, yours.

My Mind is Telling Me No, but my body, MY BODY!

Excuse the unprofessional and not very informative heading, but I'll lead in with its purpose. It's appropriate on so many levels that I'd have to reinvent the onion, but let's just peel back a layer or two here. For one, sometimes my mind keeps kicking me down, but I become physically ill with the need to make it work for me.

One of the purposes of this blog is getting creatives unstuck. Whether I'm talking about my own journey or attempting to offer up those experiences in a way that you can use them, it has some double-lucky magical property-- helping you also helps me. When you keep those around you pumping out ideas and inspiration, you can find a well to draw on when you are feeling less than confident.

One thing I discussed with my friend Joe today was how a prevailing mood can really suck the ideas out of you and make those people start to drop off too. It doesn't mean that your muse completely abandons you because sometimes he/she is in fine form and nudging your ass with his/her toe. (Okay, I'm switching to the traditional female default. Your muse can have all the parts or none of the parts, but clogging up the word real-estate is distracting and tedious.)

People often wonder how I can be both depressed and productive. Let me simplify it here. I wasn't always then and even now I'm not. 

Now I'm going to complicate it. I'm going to type in some hash lines if you want to skip ahead to the point, but for everyone else, get the personal view of things.

My friend Fermín passed away 4 years ago and it hit me hard. I was two months shy of graduating college and earning my bachelor's degree, end of January 2014. His last message to me:

That was it. Days later, I got the message from a mutual friend, Phil, to look at his FaceBook page. Condolences for his passing. He was only 43 and he came home from a conference and didn't make it to his bathroom before his heart just called it quits.

Further down on that message, I sent him more messages he would never get to read. Even after I knew he was gone, it felt like a place I could still reach him.

I worked at Petco for another few months, quitting in May. I decided I'd try (and fail) at a crochet business. It was disillusioning to turn that hobby into a business and I realized it wasn't the right choice. There were too many people in this failing economy that told me my time wasn't worth minimum wage. I'm against slave labor and I won't be paid slave labor. The increased demand gave me a condition called Trigger Thumb. I couldn't treat it because I was broke. I basically couldn't crochet for 3 weeks solid. It was pretty disgusting. I'd wake up in the morning and move that thumb and it would make a sickening pop like a cap gun going off. I thought the tendon was going to snap, but it healed.

That year didn't improve and I lost my dog two weeks shy of Christmas. Damn, but this dog was my best friend in a way I can't really help people understand. I'm not a very social person, so this dog followed me around almost all day every day, was excited to see me if I stepped outside to take out garbage and came right back in. I'm still tearing up just remembering him now. That little dog was a huge part of my life and the absence was gaping. It wasn't like a ranking system where you could prioritize spouse, child, or anything above him. He was my daily life and my daily life was now missing a huge piece.

For about 8 months, my cat then became my companion. At least until she acquired an inoperable tumor. We couldn't even let her out of basement because of the risk it would rupture. I tried to visit her, to bathe her, but it was torture. She passed away peacefully, but the chaos was in my heart.

That was 2015, about midway through. I thought I'd get through 2016 unscathed, but then I lost my grandma on Christmas day. And my fish started going into genocide mode, killing each other. Until I somehow figured out which species was responsible and nipped it in the bud. By this point, I wasn't really a stranger to the pain of loss. It's not that it hurt less, but I was reaching a point where I could either function or give the fuck up. So I functioned.

Two months after my grandma passed, I lost my mom on her birthday in 2017. It was internal hemorrhaging that they could only stop if her BP would come up, caused by cancer that was already late stage. The operation might have bought her a year or two of intense cancer treatment before she passed away. Her BP didn't come up and we had to let her go.

At that point, I hadn't been useless. I had already lost 60 pounds because one of the ways I came out of losing my dog was by starting to take better care of myself whether I felt like it or not. But it was the final straw on procrastination when it came to pursuing my dreams. I had been busily writing my first series as well and when my mom passed, I buckled down and finished it. She was the one person I talked with about writing them and because she was gone, I felt more strongly that I couldn't bury it. I published my first book in August of 2017.

To date, I now have 5 books on the market. I've released the first trilogy, its complete edition and UnNamed. 

How do I work when I'm not in the mood? I'm never that happy and depression always looms. Some days I'm really low and hardly anything gets done. Sometimes I start out feeling like absolute crap and make myself work. Sometimes it picks me up and takes me out of Kansas, sometimes it just destroys my house and I'm picking up the pieces. Long before I started losing people, I picked up chronic pain and had to learn how to not be a depressing person to be around already. I can smile and entertain even when I'm miserable. Unless you're the sort of prick that wants to see the 'real me' you'd never know it's a mask. Look, there are sometimes when you don't want honesty and that's when the person you're with is coping. The burdens are too great-- talking won't help, medicating completely annihilates them as a person, and their best recourse is to not be totally depressing. If it's so bad, how can we hide it? Because the alternative is total isolation, the pain of losing everyone you care about, and loss of purpose. We're being fake for everyone's benefit-- our own and yours alike. But guess what? We DO have safe outlets. It just isn't you and everyone we meet. We learn to compartmentalize, we learn to organize, we learn how to be useful even when we're broken.

All these people and pets are dying and I've made it about me. Damn right. Their pain is over. Whether you believe they've gone to a better place or think death is the end, it's not a place we get to go and we don't throw this life away on some promise that something better awaits. It's one reason I'm NOT in a hurry to die. The idea of leaving the people I love in any form of the pain of loss I've endured is a wretched thought. It's not for fear of hell or nothingness. I don't believe in hell and if it's nothing? Deep dreamless sleep is nothing. And it's fantastic. If people I've lost get that, that's comforting. That I don't get to see them IS my hell.

This is where the TL;DR people can uncover their eyes. lol That probably sounds bitchy, but it was funny when I said it in my head. Okay, but this is where you can jump to the point. That's more neutral and harder to misunderstand.

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There's no magic switch where ideas come because I'm at 'optimal efficiency'. That sounds robotic for a reason, because it can be. Most days when you're low, you're going to find nothing works. You go through the motions and it sucks. Still, you did something, which has a separate but motivational purpose you can draw on. Some of those low days, it clicks and you're flying. Don't expect that, but don't just NOT do it because it's not guaranteed to happen. The point is, it MIGHT and that's why it's worth trying. I might fire off plans when I'm sort of manic with inspiration. Sometimes I can meet those lofty demands, sometimes I mostly hug a pillow and scribble in a notebook without actually working. Own it-- you might not have added to your official word count, but it's real towards the process.

Today was like this. Spring Break, stayed in bed until 2 PM. Harassed people in message form, made coffee and pounded out some ideas for Part II of UnSung (you beautiful, terrible bastard of an idea, you) but didn't actually start it. Wandered over here to blog... this. That's it. I probably have an hour of sunlight left and I plan on doing nothing but mapping the location for Part II. I don't usually put too much into maps, but this is going to be a challenging space for these characters to explore and it needs all three dimensions of consideration and maybe a couple more.

That's probably the point. The onion is getting mushy at this point (also why I'm crying, I swear) but it doesn't really matter that my brain is full of doubt and fear and procrastination. I get more physically ill when I deny it. I need to create on any scale. I can't just have ideas-- I have to jot them down, sweat them out, put them beyond the 'I have an idea' place that my mind taunts me with. 

You'll hear it everywhere-- ideas are cheap. Don't take that to mean that ideas are useless. They ARE cheap. You need lots and lots of them to give them value. They don't have a set value, mind you. Only editors get to charge per word. A writer doesn't really get to place a set value on their ideas. I get to slap a price on an asset, but it doesn't protect me from piracy, you borrowing your friend's Kindle or my books earning me nothing in a used book store. Most authors will not make a living on it. And that means nothing to me. If I get time on this earth, I'll get there. If I don't? Well, I'll be dead and you can write a really stupid eulogy about how hard I tried. I won't be around to care.

I don't keep doing this because I'm merely a hopeless masochist. I do it because my mind is telling me noooooo, but my body, MY BODY IS TELLING ME YES! Seriously, guys-- I need this. Not just the passion, but the hope that it does pay off. I'm not going to pretend that I'm okay with the starving artist part. I want to encourage the same hunger for my work that I feel when I set out to make it. I want to complete you...

However, we have each day we get. If I waste a single one, I stand to lose several more on stupid regrets. So maybe today is not the day I work my ass off and churn out an amazing cover or get a 8K word count on my book. Maybe today is 'just' the day I set up points of inspiration that sow those seeds. Sometimes you 'just' and 'only' accomplish things of any scale. You know that it's a monumental step but you used those words humbly because you probably realized that ego is a shitstorm. 'I have only written five books' doesn't mean that your accomplishments are less because you haven't even published one. I know it can sting because I get sensitive about wording sometimes too, but I'm learning how to kill the comparisons. It would take a long ass blog post to really explain that I am humbling myself for the long haul not kicking down. I have 5 but I'm reaching for 50. Maybe one or more has bestseller potential. Maybe number 23, but I'm not stopping even if I 'make it'. I'm not throwing darts in the wind either. I might still speak in 'just' and 'only' because I've never had guarantees in life. My generation was one of the first to get decimated by lack of opportunity once we hit adulthood. 

Fuck that rabbit hole though. I went there too earlier today. I'll let the rest of the world argue politics and such. I'm here to help you escape or make sense of your troubles. Let me offer you a little place to start. If you read every word, you are probably in a vulnerable place. I'm certainly not a well-adjusted superhero. I just make decisions that have so far and through dumb luck kept me going. Count on yourself. No matter how much you've downed on your limitations, well, you're not always in the best place to see your strengths, but it doesn't mean they aren't there. There's a middle ground between your best and worst days, what your mind and body want when they aren't working together.

It doesn't matter what you think you can and can't do. Whether you're right or wrong, you don't have a clue. You go forward because the only way back is passive, inaction. You might find a lesson in retrospect or reflection, but camping out there is cheap. Not useless, but it's not going to secure a future. Use the present, realize the future is possible but just as unattainable. One thing my mom taught me is the value of the present. You might not be able to help that you are miserable or scared or self-hating, but you do chose to stand up or move your right arm or do the hokey pokey. You can drag yourself through every damn day until your body kicks your mind into gear. Yes, it goes both ways. Maybe you're stuck in a stubborn body that won't or can't move. Make your brain do the heavy lifting.

You can say where you want to be ideally, but life isn't an ideal. Working hard is sometimes about using the least wounded part. When someone says success came from barely lifting a finger, sometimes it means that their every effort went into lifting that finger, but it was the right finger and by sheer dumb luck. Don't worry too much about being misunderstood. It's bound to happen even with clever context or outright telling someone. You know your struggle and you know when you've earned the reward for that effort. Accept it humbly or scream it from the rooftops. Take what you need.

Sorry, guys, I'm TL;DR regardless. I want to be absolutely sure you get a valuable piece to take away. You get plenty of quote dumps on social media. I can do more and I will.

Keep going because... well, what else are you going to do? Keep writing because you have a story to tell.

Hibernation + Updates

I'm not in danger of burning out, but my brain needed a change of venue. Big projects are going on hold but I'm going down other rabbit holes, doing research and opting for some serious research via Witcher 3.

My characters have me beat on dealing with 'extreme' weather. No, this isn't the worst winter by far but it's a huge leap from what we've dealt with in years and it's funkifying my gears a bit.

My health for one. I'm not happy to admit that I've put on a few pounds even though I struggle to check my diet and exercise. I'm going to be careful but I'm not even going to attempt big changes until my body isn't firing off warnings that I can't tell are actual or the product of overactive nerves. Proceeding with care.

Drawing isn't proving easier with my hands not cooperating but I've been jotting down both comic ideas and keeping my drawing stuff accessible if the bug hits anytime. 

I'm playing it by ear. My playgrounds are still active but I'm not forcing it. I may not be hyper-productive for a month or two still, but I do keep the ideas fresh. 

I'm hoping I can still get Book 3 of my first series in order by Spring. It's a slow crawl, but I'm adapting. I may revert to crocheting a bit again. Who knows? It's not ideal, but I'm handling it the best way I know how. I have plenty to consider, plenty in patient wait for attention. 

There's still the Kindle Scout campaign going too. Vote for UnNamed in the SciFi/Fantasy category. I could use some good news to motivate me! This promises to be a unique and complex series. Unlike my first series that dedicates three books to each big plotline, this series challenges me to wrap up the main character's story in each one and start with a new character with a new set of limitations. Some characters reappear, but each story will stand alone. I won't be following the same style for each one. As usual, I just aim to paint a captivating picture with words.

Phew, so I may taper off on blogging and updating for a bit. You'll have plenty of time to get sick of my face when I hit breakneck speed again. For now, my stories are marinating for flavor...