I’ve thought for a while about what I might say in a blog post. I truly enjoy writing, as long as it’s about someone or something other than me. And since I’ve been an instructor for many years, I figured, why not write about the challenges I’ve encountered about being an author. The idea for a story is just the beginning. Actually putting that idea into words for others to read is both easy and complex at the same time.
In today’s world, virtually anyone can write something and publish it by themselves. One thing to keep in mind is who you are writing for. Are you trying to make a career out of it, or just the satisfaction of putting your creative ideas into the world? The “making money” off your stories requires a complex series of decisions you must make. Getting it out there and actually attracting readers takes time, money, and effort. Quite a bit more than you would think.
I started my writing journey because I had a story swirling in my head that I just had to put on paper. At least I had the major parts of a story that needed to be connected into something that flowed with a beginning, middle, and end. But writing part-time, a few paragraphs or pages here and there, took quite a while before a coherent story came together. Then came the rework and editing that took months, a little at a time.
Finally, I had a story, but then what? Google, of course! Google will tell me exactly the steps I need to take to find a publisher and get my masterpiece published! That began the endless wading through hundreds of pages of advice to do this or that, go in this direction or that. And at each turn, a guarantee of sales if you only pay this much money. Advice is cheap, but actually doing what is necessary to sell your story isn’t.
So, I attracted a small boutique publisher and received some initial professional editing advice that highlighted some weaknesses in how I constructed the story. Then I was ghosted. Looking back, while the story was good, my writing wasn’t the best for the reader. It was complex, technical, and didn’t flow particularly well. Spending some money on an actual editor may be one of the more important aspects of creating your book. But at two cents per word for a 100,000-word story makes you take a breath.
I went on a contract for hire site and hired an editor who claimed to have worked on and published dozens of books. Their edits essentially butchered the story, and so a few hundred dollars wasted, requiring a few months of rewriting. Finally, I just let MS Word do the “editing” for me, which really isn’t editing, just spell-checking, and tried to attract a literary agent.