Okay, but, like. I spend a lot of time thinking about whether or not being an author as a career is a viable thing to me. I’ve got a lot of things working against me and I’m overly aware of it. I’m a mentally ill, disabled, trans author, so I don’t fit the stereotype of ‘author.’ My writing is okay, but I don’t know that I’d consider it something special and my plots tend to be very direct which, in turn, I worry, makes my writing seem a bit rushed. I don’t write in popular genres or for popular tropes or in any way to market.
And don’t even get me started on marketing. I need a PR team or a PA who can spare a couple of hours a week. Because clearly I don’t know what I’m doing and do you want to know something else? I have the worst social anxiety. I know, that’s weird, because I start a lot of shit and probably seem ‘normal’, but there’s a reason I usually heart replies instead of actually responding to them, why I take days to respond to a message or why I don’t post in groups advertising my book. My palms get sweaty and I start feeling my heartbeat pick up just thinking about it.
I mean, obviously I’ve made the decision to try to make a career of it, but this isn’t my first rodeo (please remember that I have been long published under pennames) and I can feel some of my previous problems starting to creep back in. Namely how uncomfortable it makes me to be perceived. I find myself just wanting to crawl right back in my shell. Which is wild, because I’m worried about being perceived whilst also feeling invisible. I both do and don’t wish I had been one of the lucky cases who went viral for my work. But I’ve never known the right things to say or do, I’ve never been popular and my luck is something of an ongoing joke.
Sorry, I’m not trying to whine. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, because this is my blog and I can do what I want. These are just things that have been weighing on my mind. I don’t know what I’m doing. Not a single clue. I’m just trying as hard as I can, that’s all I know. I want to be able to lift my family out of debt, poverty and homelessness through my writing. I just don’t know if it’s gonna work that way.
1 thought on “Just Random Thoughts”
I feel this in my heart of hearts. And it doesn’t come off as whining. It’s venting, releasing the pressure. And as we are writers, we vent through the written word. I think right now, we are all going through the grinder. But from here, from me, please know that you are seen, but not judged. You are worthy of having your writings read and appreciated.