When you are exploring the various ways to publish and market your book there is a tendency to get lost in the minutia and forget about what’s really at your core, writing.  Writers need to write, at least I do.  The business of publication is important but I didn’t become an author so I could spend my time dealing with agents, editors, publishers and digital marketing gurus.  So I decided to start work on my next book.  But what would this one be about?  My heart and soul are in the first one.  I believe in Disney’s quote “you can’t top pigs with pigs”, so a sequel to Considering SomeplacElse would not be the answer.  I needed something different.  

I remember a quote attibuted to Woody Allen wherein he states that 80% of success is just showing up.  My initial reaction to this was “easy for him to say” and from my perspective some of his movies might have been better off if he had done more than just show up.

There is a school of thought that seems to believe writers just need to show up.  As long as you put 1500 words a day on some form of media you will succeed.  I am not of that school.  I believe the right words must show up on the first line of the first page before a story can be told.  In this context 90% of success is having these words show up.

So, for the last two weeks, I have been searching for those words, and just this past weekend, “Gabriel’s Horn” showed up along with the first 12 pages, the main character and his destination.  There are still many details to be filled in, but once those first words appeared, characters began clamoring to tell their stories.

So what’s this got to do with our self publishing quest?  Everything.  I was at a conference recently and they asked a panel what their highest and lowest points were as authors.  The commercially published spoke of accpetance and rejection by agents, editors and publishers.  But the universal self published response to both high and low was “when I finished my book”.  The triumph of completion and the sense of loss at journey’s end.

The success of your book should not be measured in how many you sell or how much money you make.  Nor is the need to write satisfied by edits and revisions.  To me the real success and satisfaction of this craft lies in having my words SHOW UP on the page AND tell the story I need to tell.

After fighting my way through the busyness, my first book will show up at book stores and in online chatter, and I am extremely delighted by this.   But its success has already been attained by its completion and it is time for me to get back to my real work, writing the words that just show up.