Love the process

Recently, a friend called me to say how much she enjoyed my first novel, A FALSE DAWN. Her praise and enthusiasm for the book lit up my insides like a furnace, and really made my day. I wish I got more calls like that. Don’t we all?

And I wish more people were reading my novel. Famous authors often talk about how often their work was “rejected” before it, and they, eventually found success. Most times, I’ve found, the way people react to my work could not be called rejection. More often, it’s indifference. When you write and publish, you have to be prepared to confront a massive wall of indifference. Your novel is your child. To everyone else, it’s just one of several thousand books published every week. Who has the time or the inclination to read yours?

Of course, all you can do – to write and then promote your work – is to make your best effort. Sometimes, that feels like cold comfort. But there’s something else you can do as well: you can enjoy the process. Not just the process of writing, which is always a pleasure to me, but the entire process of being an author, which includes the dreadful prospect of marketing your work. I’ve found ways to marketing that I’ve come to enjoy, like giving speeches at libraries on the historical background of my novel. I don’t get big crowds, but the people who do attend end up liking what they hear. The learn. They enjoy. Everyone feels good about it, including me.

If you enjoy the process, the end result doesn’t matter. (Those words are easy to write, damned hard to internalize and follow.) But truly, if I don’t sell a lot of books, I will never regret one minute of the thousands of hours I’ve put into writing and marketing A FALSE DAWN. No one can take that joy away from me.