I’ve been writing seriously now for over eleven years. As regular readers of this column will know, I’ve climbed a long ways up Writer Mountain, but not as far as I hoped I would. Still, I haven’t done badly.
And yet…
I had a few things happen this last week that brought me down a peg.
First of all, I was going to be a featured author at an event next year. Or at least thought I was, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that I’m not a big enough author name yet.
Second, I attended a session with a successful artist at a recent sci-fi convention. He creates concept artwork for movies and TV shows, and during the session, he made the comment that if you are not an author with millions of followers, you don’t have a shot at getting your book made into a TV show or a movie. Studios will only touch you if your fan base is large enough.
And finally, I was in discussions with an audio publisher about producing some of my books after they had recently picked up Office of the Lost, and once again, they said that my sales just aren’t large enough to justify them making an investment in me and my books.
The only way to become big is to already be big.
Bad things always come in threes, don’t they? The universe seems to be trying to tell me that I don’t have a chance, that people don’t like my work enough, that I should just give up.
But I am a stubborn son of a bitch.
I didn’t get a real start on my writing career until I was forty-five, and since then I have published over forty works, including fourteen novels. I’ve built thriving communities around writing, both locally and online, and I run a book festival – something I never thought would happen.
And while these setbacks feel crushing, sooner or later my optimistic side bounces back, and I pick up the pieces and go on. I remind myself that it’s only a no until it’s a yes, and that one of my most important qualities is persistence.
To take a little of my own advice, it’s time to look back down the mountain and see how far I’ve come, and then suck a little happy juice from the successes that I’ve had.
Maybe, one day soon, something great will happen. Maybe one day I will be BIG.