Patience and the Writing Life

Writers know all about waiting. ALL about it.

We write a story and submit it. We accumulate rejections. Finally, our agent sells a story and then another. We wait through the edits and the design and the production. A year.

We become marketers of that book (those books), but we’re supposed to work on the next…and then the next.

Lots of Books!
Lots of Books!

We query again and discover that this next doesn’t quite fit with the publisher’s plans. He wants a shorter book. Ah. Shorter. Right.

We smile. One must, of course. And we wonder what this means, this latest wall we’ve hit. So we hire an editor–you know, someone who doesn’t love us already. Someone other than our critique partners.

And while we wait to get the story back from Old Eagle Eyes, we ponder. And we read. (And, of course, we begin–or finish–another story. One does.)

But what exactly will we do when we get the manuscript back? We’ve been thinking. Watching other writers take the step from here to there, from traditional to (YIKES) self-published.

If we do find a home at a publishing house, we’ll have that year to wait. Oh, and wasn’t that the sweetest letter we received from a reader who wonders when she’ll have our next book? Oh, and there’s another one. Begging. Will they lose interest if they don’t see a new book from us for yet another year?

We cast about for the right answer. We look over our shoulder–and over the fence–and wonder what if?

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Other writers do it. At a recent conference we heard from authors who first published traditionally and now…yikes, should we say it?…publish on their own. And. Make. Money. And. Find. Readers. And. Have. Fun.

Oh, my.

The riskiness of it. The courage it must take.

Publish on my own? Me? Moi-meme? Io? Yours truly?

Well, who knows? But I’m reading Catherine Ryan Howard’s hilarious Self-Printed, The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing. And I’m learning. I’ve been playing with a fantastic cover design program called KD Cover Kit, which uses PhotoShop Cloud. I’m relearning Scrivener.

What do you think? Would you read a self-published book? Would you read one of mine if I released it myself? Or would you shy away because there’s no publishing house with its name on the cover? Does self-publishing have the same stigma it used to?

Talk to me, please. I’d like to know.