♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦
Topic #135
What is your biggest fear? What random and
innocuous thing makes your skin crawl?
Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.
I’ve faced some heavy obstacles in my life. No stranger to hardship, I made a choice to not fear. In my mind, I figured, if the powers that be were testing me, or abusing me, then removing any tools for them to use would keep me safe. Like buddhist monks, I learned to both control my emotions and come to terms with them as they manifested.
Fear is a difficult emotion to overcome. It is a safety mechanism from our earliest days. Overriding the hard wiring of the brain takes stone will. Having stone will was another goal of mine in the face of my struggles. To overcome any obstacle, to not shy away, to continue on the path you’ve chosen for yourself, you must have stone will.
My answer to the question isn’t going to be the most typical. Certainly it is something that should be a bit obvious. Undoubtedly the root reason will be a more obscure.
My greatest fear at this point in my life is that I will lose the ability to publish my work. It isn’t a lack of sales, or anonymity. It isn’t even a lack of ideas to write. I’m blessed to have already written six beautiful books, which will all be published (or so I think) by the end of 2020. That is my goal, anyway. Finding and affording editors, proofers, and covers will move those dates around a bit, as the process always does.
Between now and then, after then, I will be afraid that the platform that has allowed me to publish could dissolve. It has happened before, with the closing of Booktrope, and therefore I know that possibility lies in wait. One might say, that with my concern for something having power over my fate, or my worry that fear produces such experiences, I should not mention it. Sometimes, speaking the word removes the power. After all, there are so many ways to be sure your work as an author gets out.
In reality, the fear is having to go through figuring out my outlet all over again. It is such a difficult path to forge without help, without information, with few resources… Could I? Should I? Would I? I cannot say. One too many blows to the heart will make a person shy. I’m already shy. Another strike that hard, that would be a killing blow, I’d wager. That would probably put an end to my writing—not because I don’t love it, or no longer would want to write. The difficulty and suffering cannot be sustained, and either adversity ebbs, or we do.
To me, that’s a very scary, skin crawly place to be.
Let’s see what fears the other authors have to tell us about…
My mom, who had the bravery to move to Alaska in 1946, gave me some excellent advise when I was young …
The muscles you use are the ones that will be the strongest.
She had faced plenty of challenges in her life – raised on a no-water Dakota farm during the Depression, worked in the defense plants during the war, married a jerk, raised a son, lived in Alaska for over 30 years in the days when there were no services and sparse infrastructure, lost her second husband (my dad), raised a daughter, never had a lot of money but used that hard-scrabble upbringing to turn what she had into what we needed.
And when I have faced difficulties in my life — and there have been some true mountains to overcome — I have remembered her advice and thanked God that He is growing my muscles.
And that, really, is all that you can take with you — your ‘muscles’ from all you learned. I think that’s why I care about mental pursuits more than anything.
I don’t think you need worry about not being able to publish. Even without KDP there are other ways e.g Draft2Digital or Smashwords.
My anxiety refuses to let me listen to sense. LOL The immediate answer I have is: omg all the work of transferring. It’s crippling.
I believe in spreading my books over as many platforms as possible. (I’m on 4 right now for my ebooks) so even if one goes down I still have an avenue to reach readers.
So very smart!
I can understand that. You are a fantastic writer, by the way.
Thank you, AEM! I appreciate that.
With all of the platforms out there for writers to share their work, what is the fear of publishing? One of the things I learned as an inheritor of the African American literary tradition is that it’s almost impossible to truly stifle someone’s voice. Black newspapers, Urban fiction, and the emerging African American Muslim voice through self-publishing demonstrate the tenacity of writers to share their experiences and refusal to be silenced.
Self-publishing as we currently know it is very much a new creation. I started writing and trying to be published before that was feasible (Summer of 1989 was my first attempt at writing), and it was next to impossible to get through the door back then. Trying to find an agent, let alone a publisher was a insurmountable castle, to which many authors aspired (so nothing has changed there). Without connections, and, I dare to say, a penis instead of a vagina, having my voice heard was quite a battle. It wasn’t until 2007/8 that self publishing became a larger reality for me. Up until then, vanity publishing was expensive and shunned. Of course there was Lulu in the early aughts, but that site had fees fees fees. The constant fees and cost act like the same kind of gateway that agents and editors once posed, though it became more achievable. It wasn’t until 2009 that I discovered createspace, and had gained enough savings to move ahead (Blue Honor actually cost me about $800 to put together). I had been writing since 1989 with the intention of publishing. I had a real product by 1997, but the agent I did manage to get was incapable of closing the deal, and I lost her after a couple years because there was no payout for her. That circle of similar events repeats itself throughout my writing career–great gain followed by its loss just before anything truly good could happen for me. Logically, it would turn out that self-publishing will implode in such a manner that I will return to the original start–for instance, I can’t afford to pay for a Kirkus Review, like I did on OP-DEC, probably more like $800 just to press publish (not the cost of editor, proofer, formatter and cover designer included). Even if it does not, my voice has never risen above the din of all the others. As I said to a friend today, I need to figure out how to make my work rise to the top, because I’m drowning in the sea of books that are out there. Talent is not enough. Talent is swimming with lack of talent in kind today. What rises to the top are those with enough charisma to seal the deal time and again, regardless of their actual writing ability.
This is a continual pattern for me, either having my voice beat back or drown out in the flood. If it’s not that, then I sort of fly through undetected. Unnoticed. I’ve had many friends in the industry try to figure out the difference between my platform and what they are doing, and why there is such a disparity in results, but they’re just as flabbergasted as I am. Between the art, the finished product, the social media presence, the blog, all of it, I should be doing way better. Marketing may not come easy to me, but according to my colleagues, I am doing what I should be and have been for years. I simply am not being taken seriously–which means getting reviews and greater visibility is a higher reach.
The only thing that keeps me going is that it’s so easy to put the books out and I refuse to take no for answer. The hardest part in that frame of mind is being short on cash flow. I’m of a mind to believe that the problem with my marketing is that I don’t have the capitol to make it effective. That’s not something that will rectify for many years–despite my improvement in position, my responsibilities rise up to eat whatever gains I make. It’s a fascinating cycle to observe over and over, and it’s clear and predictable. So I can see that somehow, someway, the issue of cost will become insurmountable, once again blocking me.
And as for asking for help, that falls under the same issue as charisma. I am treated much differently than my colleagues by those I reach out to for help–I’m pushed back, treated as a nuisance, and generally given very little consideration. So when I do find people to work with, I am very thankful. It’s very painful to lose them. They are key to publishing, playing such important roles.
Hopefully that clarifies what I was meaning by losing my avenue of publishing.