portrait of the artist as an origin story
In all my maundering about fantasy as a genre and the craft of fiction writing, I talk very little about my private life. Today, I’m going to do something different and share the story of how I became a self-published author. It’s an insight into what it’s like to be an artist for anyone who ever wonders, and hopefully will provide food for thought for any authors weighing their options.
pre-pre
I first got the bug via fanfic, which is true of many authors I’ve talked to. My particular poison was Pern, my inspirations twofold. I wanted to name dragons, and it drove me up the wall that dragons could be neither black nor red, which to my pre-teen sensibilities, was an afront against the proper ordering of the universe.*
* Some sources claim I still feel this way.
What came next is a progression familiar to a lot of authors: writing nifty lists wasn’t enough. I wanted to flesh out characters. I had ideas that didn’t fit into the world I loved, not without damaging it. I WANTED MORE.
In short, I had realized I needed to write my own stories.
fast forward
I spent undisclosed years tinkering at my writing, honing my worldbuilding and learning craft. My early attempts were terrible. If there are author whose voice springs from their head like Athena, fully-fleshed, that’s neat, but it damned sure wasn’t true of me.
I had to find my voice over time. I had to learn how to make my own worlds, ones that grew from my fantasies and worldview more than from the books I loved growing up. I had to learn to edit, which is an exercise in discipline. You have to 1) candidly assess the quality of your own work, 2) destroy what isn’t good, and worst, 3) it’s a step that can be ignored in a way that not finishing a chapter can’t be. The problems are still there, but you pretend they’re not while you endlessly tweak your favorite piece of dialogue. End result: not-goodness.
Well, long story still fairly long, I training-montaged my way through these barriers. I stopped trying to imitate my mental image of authorliness and just started writing in the same exuberant way that I tell stories. And they were mine. Frequently weird. Both hopeful and cynical. Full of sword fights and splashy magic. A dash of cursing, a hint of romance, a metric ton of wine and food. Not a lick of Medieval or European fucking anywhere. And a ‘THE END’ that never involved my heroes going back to the boring, normal place they started from. In short: I got good.
but
One crucial detail about being a storyteller: an audience is mandatory. I didn’t just want to make worlds, I wanted to share them. I’d been submitting to agents with varying degrees of commitment for a period of years and fell into a pattern. I would send out a modest stack of queries, get no traction, and send out another half dozen. When no one bit, I would shelve the project, which was almost always the first book in a series, and move on to the next idea I’d had whilst querying. Maybe this one was more marketable.
To describe this as demoralizing undersells the querying process. There are authors out there more talented than me – possibly enough to fill a phonebook – but still I write fun, engaging reads. And it just didn’t matter. It feels natural that enormous amounts of dedication and effort leading to genuine improvement should lead in turn to, well, something, but this wasn’t happening.
all bets are off at the end of the world
I don’t need to explain how startling and worrying the advent of Covid was since the entire world went through it. Early on in lockdown, I just… decided to self-publish a book with the same degree of cost/benefit analysis and soul-searching I apply to everything.* People were stressed, stuck at home, needing an escape, and here I was with this significant stockpile of (potentially free) entertainment just sitting around not entertaining anyone.
* None.
No real thought went into the decision; I definitely hadn’t made a choice at this point to flip the bird to trad publishing and go it alone. The book I chose (Into the Darkbower) was a rare pearl in my stable: a standalone novel. It’s a little off-brand, being as much paranormal/ horror as fantasy, and at the time, I honestly felt like I was throwing it away.
It wasn’t a smashing success; I’ve sold or given away a few hundred copies by now, just past its second birthday. But the journey, my friends. Total strangers read my book and formed opinions of it. A web journal devoted to horror brought up Terry Pratchett when talking about the freakin’ book I freakin’ wrote. Yeah, I’m still high on that one, no apologies.
Slowly, it dawned on me: I wasn’t waiting anymore. My fate no longer hinged on the opinion of some person in New York for whom books might be a passion, but were first and foremost a business calculation. No more starting a fascinating series, writing one book, and shelving the entire endeavor in pursuit of something hopefully more marketable; I could dust off anything I loved and actually write the story through to THE END.
I was Doing The Thing.
shift back to present tense
Self-publishing isn’t for everyone. There are more out-of-pocket up-front costs, and they can really add up depending on how much, if any, of the editing/ design/ marketing work you’re realistically able to do yourself. I don’t sell as many books as I could or should, and it’s a process, trying to become less of a total dunce when it comes to marketing. You have to be able to self-discipline because the only deadlines are your own. You need to be a lot less shy about selling yourself than I currently am.
That said, do I ever regret the decision to go all-in on self-publishing? A resounding Hell No.
I am living my dream, and it feels fantastic.
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