The past two weeks have been a blur.
I’m in the last stages of editing my novel, The House, that is due out later this year, and times have been quite interesting.
It’s funny what happens when you reach a point of having to let go of a book and “put it out there” so to speak.
For me it’s a scary time.
And particularly so, since I’m self-publishing this novel. My first work, Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident” a collection of short stories, was brought to print by a traditional publishing house.
With the waning of the economy and thunderbolt changes rocking the publishing industry I decided, or rather my husband encouraged me to self publish.
It’s been great. It’s also required a lot of hard work.
The great part is that much of the work I am doing, if not practically all, is what authors who are traditionally published do to achieve both artistic success at their craft and generate profitable sales for the company who publishes their books.
The second good thing about this process is that I was not under the gun to get my work out.
I’ve been able to take my time and work at my own pace.
It’s important for me not to rush the creative process.
More than that I’ve been able to be present for my children, my husband, and myself in ways that I’m hearing and fearing that many traditionally published writers wish they could be.
But once in contract with a publisher and you’ve signed on the dotted line to write a book and deliver it at an appointed date, many people depend on you to have the book ready when an as promised.
It’s important for me to acknowledge where I am in my life and what my responsibilities are.
I love writing, but I also love my family.
Just as important, I need to know that I’ve given my personal best to crafting a work that I’m preparing for public presentation.
To do that I have to know that I’m giving enough attention to the people in my life that matter the most, those whose presence in my life sustain me in doing the work I love, and who, if absent or worse yet, I ignored in an effort to meet a contract deadline, I would be unable to offer my personal best.
I guess I’m torn, but not between the challenges that many traditionally published authors presently face.
I want to write the best book I can possibly write.
I have to know and feel that I gave my best to then move into the stage of promoting a work.
If I feel I cut short the process of crafting my work for the sake of meeting a deadline, I know that down the road, and when promoting that work my energy will fail. I will have cut short myself.
For in the end, it does not whose under whose auspices a story or novel comes to print, whose money underwrites the printing costs, it is always, the writer’s name that stands underneath a title.