It takes a lot of courage for any person to come out and say they are the best in the career they have chosen. To be viewed as a great author is a dream held by many faces in the writing world (including myself). But how do you grab hold of this title of greatness?
I’ve worked for many years and I still don’t know the perfect answer to this question, but I can provide a little bit of advice to help you out.
I bet you hold a large number of great ideas for your latest novel deep inside that head of yours. Sadly, there are too many road blocks in your mind preventing you from putting those words on paper or typing them into your computer. Right? I know you are dealing with this because I have been dealing with this struggle for MONTHS. The idea is generally there but the fine details keep changing and that makes it hard for any author to make their story progress. Forcing words out would be the worst thing you could do when you hit these same roadblocks.
I tell you not to force yourself to write when nothing’s coming to you, but I know not everyone has the privilege to take their sweet time with their work. While I’m a self-publishing author and don’t have a strict schedule; others are working through a company and take on those deadlines. Still, you shouldn’t force yourself to get words onto a page simply because you’re deadline is less than a week away. (Of course, the stress of that is something I don’t understand. I do not mean to talk down how troubling those times can be).
However, I do think it is alright for any author to take a half-an-hour or maybe a full hour to step away from their work and try to clear out their head. If you don’t allow yourself some break time then you will only fry your brain and cause nothing but destruction to your thoughts. That destruction will reveal itself in your work and you don’t want that to happen.
All this mumble jumble brings me back to the topic of this blog post. Problems may occur in you’re writing or in your real life which calls for you to hold back on progressing the story. It will suck when those moments happen, but you have to find the courage to take a deep breath and work through those challenges. There’s no doubt you will be able to find your greatness again. Now get out there and show off to everyone how great you are.
Do you think your work is the greatest it can be or are you working to make yourself even greater? How are you doing that? Let me know in the comments below!
I set out a minimum word count. Whether ideas come or are scarce is irrelevant. I have to ensure the word count is met, though some days, ideas don’t flow out at all, and i find myself cutting and deleting the shit that i just wrote! Struggles! lol. I’d like to find out how it’s possible to self publish though, and nice read Shelby.
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I self-publish on Amazon through a company called Create Space. (Link here: https://www.createspace.com/). I haven’t published any books in a while, so I can’t recall all the fine details to the process, but the website is simple to understand. I had no problems figuring it out when I published my books. Also, I have been looking into self-publishing through NOOK. (Link here: https://www.nookpress.com/ebooks). Can’t say anything positive or negative about the NOOK set up because I haven’t used it yet, but it might be worth checking out.
I will provide you with a word of warning using this method though. Through these sites, I only receive a small 10% of the money brought in from the books I sell. This is fine for me, but this might not be the way you wish to go if you want to make writing novels your steady job. Also, I know CreateSpace will not edit or directly proofread your novels except to search for copyright matters. All edits for your story are entirely left in your hands. I found a couple errors in my novels after they were published, but that’s often how it goes with self-publishing. If you have any other questions, just ask and I’ll see what I can do to help you out.
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Pretty a good number of disadvantages already, and 10% really is too low, right? esp from jours and hours of tiring work and they can’t even help with the editing! Can someone ambitious enough open a print house and just publish his things and market it? Possible, right?
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I know! Some day someone will figure this out, maybe? All we can do now is either pay tons of money by hiring a team, lose lots of the money we earn with the catches from self-publishing, or we can get nothing on sketchy publishing sites. The author life is the hard life.
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This is just daylight robbery, very unjust, it’s like they are saying, you come to us we offer the platform you need, we rip you off and get 90% of your hardwork and u ain’t telling us shit! The other publishers offer 15% right…?and that is after you have suffered many rejections like hemingway. Lol
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Yeah. It all comes down to this: Do you think your story is good enough to go through an honest company? Can you find an honest company willing to put out an unknown author’s work? And finally, do you have the money to publish through one of these good companies? It’s all about spending enough money to make enough money, or so it seems.
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Ahh very thoughtful indeed. Let us all pray! You have helped me in my shaping my thoughts forward. Thank you. I will follow the links in your comment later.
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You’re very welcome! I hope you figure out the best plan for you? Good luck!
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