I’ve published two novels. One sold well enough to complicate my tax prep for a few years, and the other bombed. They’re both out of print so I won’t waste your time with titles. In neither case was it the life-changing experience I thought it would be. It reminded me of a teaching from Zen Buddhism:
Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
After I published, I was still chopping wood and carrying water. I still had my day job. I still had to do my share the usual household scutwork. I still had to pay bills, pay taxes, etc. My life had changed; I was now a “published author”, but it hadn’t changed so much that I could lose touch with basic reality.
Thanks for sharing your experience, and you are completely right about “chop wood, carry water.” I spend a lot of time wondering if I would love or hate signing books for fans, and whether I would want to be involved in making the Netflix series or not.
In other words, I’m not a serious writer. It’s a daydream. Intellectually, I know that even if I were to sell the book, or even self publish, it wouldn’t change my life. Thousands of books are written and published every year, and success has as much to do with tenacity as it does luck, neither of which I believe I possess is sufficient quantities. But I dream about it the way one would dream about winning the lottery.
You put in the effort, and you should be proud of what you accomplished. Your words and ideas will live on as an indelible testament to your life. Unless it was something weird like hentai fanfic, in which case it’s probably better lost to history and you should keep that to yourself.
I’ve published two novels. One sold well enough to complicate my tax prep for a few years, and the other bombed. They’re both out of print so I won’t waste your time with titles. In neither case was it the life-changing experience I thought it would be. It reminded me of a teaching from Zen Buddhism:
After I published, I was still chopping wood and carrying water. I still had my day job. I still had to do my share the usual household scutwork. I still had to pay bills, pay taxes, etc. My life had changed; I was now a “published author”, but it hadn’t changed so much that I could lose touch with basic reality.
Thanks for sharing your experience, and you are completely right about “chop wood, carry water.” I spend a lot of time wondering if I would love or hate signing books for fans, and whether I would want to be involved in making the Netflix series or not.
In other words, I’m not a serious writer. It’s a daydream. Intellectually, I know that even if I were to sell the book, or even self publish, it wouldn’t change my life. Thousands of books are written and published every year, and success has as much to do with tenacity as it does luck, neither of which I believe I possess is sufficient quantities. But I dream about it the way one would dream about winning the lottery.
You put in the effort, and you should be proud of what you accomplished. Your words and ideas will live on as an indelible testament to your life. Unless it was something weird like hentai fanfic, in which case it’s probably better lost to history and you should keep that to yourself.