Dollar Sign Dilemma

Indie Pub, ,

Dollar Sign imageMost of us would rather admit to how much we weigh or the details of our sex lives than come honestly clean about how much money we do or do not make. In this case how much we do or do not make as Indie Authors.

I’ll admit this much. Our accountant wants to reduce my writing efforts to hobby status. On top of that my 2015 tax statement from Amazon wouldn’t cover my stamp budget and I hardly ever use anything but email.

PLUS yesterday a sister Indie was complaining she only makes a few hundred dollars a month on one of her titles – one of several making money. In other words she could pay what’s now my rent and used to be my mortgage with her earnings. I can’t use those same words about myself.

So – how does the Besotted-with-Indie side of me explain this to the Hardnosed-Business-Gal side of me?

First of course there’s the reality check consideration. I only have three Indie titles published. My previous traditionally published titles don’t count even though they’re out there in bright red Harlequin Intrigue splendor. Only my Indies count toward productivity calculation.

When I was originally thinking about the Indie route possibility the popular wisdom was you must have three to five titles out before you start getting noticed. What I hear now is five to ten titles. So I obviously have a distance to go before I count myself out as a selling author.

Second reality check. I’m not a fast writer. It took me a year to publish those three titles in my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series. When it comes to waiting for a real payday to happen I’d better not hold my breath even though blue is my color.

That’s really all I’ve got for Hardnosed Business Gal. She has to kick Besotted with Indie in the butt to write faster. My money in that gamble – what I can scrape together – is on Not-Going-to-Happen across the board. I manage what I can manage when I can manage it. That’s all.

I guess it’s time to stop bristling when the accountant mentions hobby status. I’m retired after all. Several times retired actually from several ventures where I was searching for tax write-offs rather than taxable income.

Maybe I should be thankful for that. Maybe I ought to stop dancing the I-Think-I-Should-Quit-Writing Mambo every time I hear somebody talking dollar signs. Maybe it’s time to shut up and pray that when I finally have ten titles out the discoverability number won’t have risen to fifteen.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

RR

A Wrong Way Home – Book 1 of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series – is a FREE eBook at Amazon and other online retailers. All of my books are available at my Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/.

We Have Everything to Fear from Fear Itself

Get Published,

DO IT ANYWAY from Marie DuessQuestion: What does most damage to a writer’s career?

Answer: The simple answer to that is FEAR.

In my experience the biggest boulder in my writing career path – and probably yours too – has been FEAR. I write the world bold and in solid caps because that’s how it arrives in my psyche. Pulsing as well and emitting a ratchet sound.

What is the most common source of this very unpleasant experience? FEAR that I don’t know what I’m doing. My story isn’t good enough. My writing isn’t good enough. I’m not good enough.

I have plenty of voices among my memory circuits ready and eager to echo the sentiment. “Alice you’re just not good enough!” First soloist in my personal negativity chorus is my mother. You can fill in the blank with yours.

I generally keep on working despite those voices because I love to write. This is your best defense against FEAR in all its forms. Immerse yourself in the work. Get lost in the words and the fun of coming up with them. Pull the wonder of the writing experience over your head like a blanket. Stuff it in your ears. Reduce the negative nigglings in your head and gut by remembering We Write for the Joy of It.

The FEAR of not-good-enough rises to an even more powerful decibel level when it’s time to submit our work to an agent or editor. Or for us Indies – to upload onto Amazon. Each of these is a terrifying leap. We’re delivering our precious creations and our tender psyches to the world. The response could very well be yet another “You’re just not good enough.” In a deafening and debilitating roar this time.

Do It Anyway Sign -- from 1990sThis is what I call a Do It Anyway Situation. I shall illustrate with an anecdote. Way back when there were only hardcopy manuscripts I was building a collection of my own. Partial manuscripts to be exact – every one just short of long enough to constitute a submission which of course I never made.

My collection grew to such volume my husband was forced to build shelves for it across the walls not far from the ceiling on both sides of a long hallway in our apartment. My partials sat there gathering dust and turning yellow until a therapist friend of mine asked a dreadful question.

“What are you planning to do with those?”

She listened almost patiently while I recited my litany. I’d abandoned each project because a better one came to mind. The characters weren’t whomever. The plots weren’t whatever. The market had shifted. The cats ate my mailing labels. In other words I was too frightened to make the leap or – even more scarily – to take the risk of venturing into judgement territory.

After I’d laid my lengthy litany on her my friend said simply this. “You have two choices. Pick the best manuscript and submit it. Or ask Jonathan to build another shelf.”

The image engulfed me. Shelf after shelf of brittle yellow pages from ceiling to floor until the hallway was filled. Then along the walls of every room in turn until we were entombed by my not-good-enough work. The absurdity of that vision – like something in a New Yorker cartoon – triggered the kickstart mechanism in me. I began to submit. I was eventually published. I’ve been published many times since.

Do It Anyway SignOvercoming fear. Relegating it to non-bold lower case. That is a Do It Anyway Situation. Period. End of commentary – almost. If you’d like a Do It Anyway! reminder sign to tape to your computer or staple to your forehead. Email me at aliceorrbooks@gmail.com. I’d love to send you one. Or several if you prefer.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

RR

A Wrong Way Home – Book 1 of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series – is a FREE eBook at Amazon and other online retailers. All of my work – including Books 2 and 3 – are available at my Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/

 

Life is a Blizzard Where I Come From

Stories of my Life,

Me in My SnowsuitWhen I was a little girl I thought everybody lived in blizzard country like I did. I thought every child wore a snowsuit for nearly half of the year. This is me in my snowsuit in a few old photographs.

That was life growing up in the North Country. Blizzards and snowsuits. Sleds and ice skates. Double-knit mittens and hats created on Grandma’s needles. The memories of those years are sharp and reside in all of my senses.

I see the snowbank so high in front of our house that there was a photo of me standing on top of it grasping a power line. We’d had a power outage of course. Wires were down somewhere nearby – snapped by heavy ice.

Outages happened often in winter but we were cozy at 439 East Avenue because we had a coal furnace fed by my father from a bin in the basement. I feel the rush of heat when he opened the cast iron door and threw coal into the fiery center.

I hear the chuck of his shovel pushing into the bin and the whoosh of release when he let the load fly into the flames. I smell it too – the not unpleasant char that scratched my throat just a little until the furnace door was closed and latched again.

The most vivid flavor of my blizzard season memories comes from outside the house – the snow I ate despite my mother’s claim I’d contract a terrible disease with a long name I’ve forgotten. I taste the strangely satisfying hint of brackishness as snow crystals melted on my tongue.

Memories urge me to give them life on the page. Tire chains clanging down a quiet street at night. Young ears pressed to morning radios for school closure bulletins after a four-foot overnight snowfall – as a white wonderland waits to be explored and enjoyed.

I offer a glimpse of North Country winter in  A Vacancy at the Inn – Book 4 of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series. There’s a blizzard near the end but this is a novella and an intense personal situation. Not much page space remains for weather in detail.

Or maybe I held back. Cherishing the magic of my private memory winters in a silence as deep as the silence of a snowscape after a storm. Still I sense a Riverton Road story in my future – and I hope in yours as its reader – where life is a blizzard big time.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

RR

A Wrong Way Home – Book 1 of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series – is a FREE eBook at Amazon and other online retailers. All of my books are available at my Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/.