I’m making progress. Today was the first normal day in a few days.
For reading, I continued Vol. 5 of IDW’s TMNT. I’m about halfway through and should finish over the weekend.
For data analysis, no work today.
For marketing, no work today.
My main focus is getting this novel done. I hit my quota of 2200 words for the day and I’m going to keep going. I’m hoping to finish somewhere between 3500-4000 words today. I’m sitting at 62,000 right now. I think there’s another 5,000 words or so left. I can’t see the ending yet, but I can see the final battle and how it’s going to end. I just can’t see what happens immediately after that yet.
In other words, I’m racing toward the end.
ANOTHER THOUGHT: 10 YEARS AGO…
Many of you who follow me know how I got my start in publishing. This month is exactly 10 years to the month that I got out of the hospital.
In July 2012, I fell ill with food poisoning after eating a nice dinner at a restaurant. My wife rushed me to the hospital…where I didn’t leave for a month. I had food poisoning but then picked up an infection in the hospital, and doctors almost didn’t catch it. The only reason I survived was because of a stroke of luck. My wife’s old roommate was in medical school at the time, and when she heard about my symptoms, she told me what to tell the doctors…and then they discovered what was really wrong.
In fact, an article came out in the USA Today newspaper about the type of infection I caught and how it was killing people across the country, mainly because of bureaucracy, lack of sanitation, and inaction on the part of hospitals. I was able to find the article here: https://www.cnbc.com/2012/08/16/far-more-could-be-done-to-stop-the-deadly-bacteria-c-diff.html
It is dated August 16, 2012, which is right around the time I got out of the hospital. It honestly might have been that exact week; I can’t remember. I used to have a paper copy of the newspaper but it’s probably long gone now. I kept it to remind me of what my life was like at the lowest point.
While I was in the hospital, I asked myself what I was doing with my life. I worked a crappy job as a claims adjuster (and got yelled at every day, all day, in English and Spanish), I had a ridiculous amount of student loan debt (loans were half my paycheck), a car payment that took up another third of my check, and I lived in a tiny studio apartment, and I had only written some short stories and poems that no one would look at. I had some novel ideas but agents wouldn’t even give me the time of day.
I swore on that hospital bed that I would become a writer and I didn’t care what I had to do to make it happen.
This month, ten years ago, I got out of the hospital, healed up, and shortly afterward, I discovered self-publishing. I’m pretty sure it was The Creative Penn first, followed shortly by The Alliance of Independent Authors. I learned what was possible, and I couldn’t wait to try it for myself. A few months later, I came up with the concept for my first novel: How to Be Bad (now Magic Souls), and I spent the entirety of 2013 learning about self-publishing, learning how to write my first book, and working with my first editor (Gary Smailes at Bubblecow, an amazing guy). I spent $40 on a premade cover from Goonwrite.com. I bought Scrivener for $35.
On January 6, 2014, How to Be Bad/Magic Souls was finally available on Amazon in KDP Select. Three people bought it: me (because I wanted to generate a sales rank for the book), my writing buddy at the time, and my mom. I made $5.79 in January 2014 and somewhere around $50 total for the book during that first year. Yikes. I made just about every tactical error you can think of, but I kept listening to podcasts, reading blogs and books, buying paid courses (if I could afford them), and asked people in the community for advice. Somehow, I survived that first year without doing anything ridiculous or stupid.
Fast forward a decade later and it’s crazy how far I’ve come. Joanna Penn was the person who got me into self-publishing; this month, I’ll be on her show for the third time. ALLi gave me a lot of confidence and helped me find good information; I’m the Outreach Manager at ALLi now and have done countless podcasts & speaking events on their behalf, and even wrote a book for them.
I work a much better job now (thank god), I have written more books than I ever dreamed of, I’m constantly amazed by my book sales, and I’m especially amazed by how many people recognize me at speaking events. I’ve been published in Writer’s Digest, spoken at countless events, and have a pretty recognizable name in the indie space. Sure, I’m not a full-time author yet, but I definitely am on a path to get there.
All of this took ten years, folks. Ten years. Put another way, I’ll be 35 this year. This took nearly a third of my life. And I’ve still got a long way to go.
If you’re wondering whether the writing life is for you, keep at it. Keep writing. Keep reading. Keep learning. With every book you publish, aim to make at least one fewer mistake. Stay optimistic no matter how crappy things get. Get a mentor. Keep learning business, copyright, covers, book descriptions, etc. Dreams do come true!
Have a good night.
