What have we learned from this? Honesty is key. Just say it. No beating around bushes, no holding back for later, just say it. Why am I saying this? Because the notion that haunts every writer is 'save some for the book'. 'Don't blog it all out.'
I could go dig it up (aspie) but I'm lazy right now (actually headache all day yesterday and fibro flare all night, thank you cold front and wild storms), one year maybe around 08 or 09 when I started really coming out about my stuff on bluejacky (before I pulled it all back into private for a couple of years) (I know, I'll stop doing this), before I dreamed I'd ever get healthy again and my brain was still super glitchy, I wrote about how all of us getting honest on our blogs would help us all solve our problems. I taunted writers who were selfish enough to hold back on really helpful stories and advice just so they could make money on it later, to a much more limited audience, when the people who needed that help the most couldn't afford to purchase to read. I still feel that way about ebooks- people who read that way must necessarily have the tech to read, which I feel limits the world audience even further, although I can see how it also enhances sales when used in combo with hard copy.
When I first set out my publishing goals, my top priority was not about making money. I based it on this- one very long night in an ER waiting room I found a book cart. I read four books out of that cart that night, books I'd never have known existed otherwise. I was very grateful for those books to help keep my mind occupied and help me pass the time. Also, when my mother lived in a nursing home for 5 years, they had a small library of donated books along one wall in the dining area for residents and visitors to borrow from. THAT is where I want my first book to wind up, sitting around in book carts and on library shelves in places that are dismal and sad and people can't help picking them up. I asked my publisher what it would take for me to get hard copy placed around the world, not just in warehousing for internet purchase, not just in ebooks, and I went ahead and contracted and paid in full to get that done. I'm still working on that first book. I'm actually working on a whole stack of books, but that first one is priority.
My writing schedule has been shot to hell several times since I set out to do this. I'm learning so much about my own temperament going through this, and my growth as a person would never have been this cool if I hadn't attempted all this juggling. I have come to realize that even if something really bad stops me altogether and that book never gets finished, I'm good with all this. I have truly enjoyed this challenge, and I hope it goes on and I do some really fun things with the rest of my life.
So I bing awake around one this morning, a phrase sticks in my mind, I'm too asleep to get up and write it down like I usually do, and even as I'm falling back asleep I'm commanding myself to REMEMBER. It's been so many years since my short term memory got blitzed. But I woke up again and remembered it, and commanded myself again to REMEMBER before I fell back asleep. I did that several times, and the first thing I thought this morning was that phrase, and all through getting up and booting up the laptop and getting my coffee, I kept repeating that phrase and telling myself REMEMBER, because I lose so many thoughts nearly as fast as I think them. I could feel this one slipping as I became more and more awake, but finally got it written down in my work area. Writing with a pen on paper would have lost it by this point, it had to be typed as quickly as possible so the entire phrase would make it out of my head- my glitchy brain is a funny thang, once the words start coming out, you either catch them as they flow, or they're just gone. Well, I caught it. And that is the very first time since 2004 that I have remembered an entire phrase and managed to keep it intact that long in my head and still get it written down. 10-14-14, ten years later.
Today is starting out kinda hard, gotta get on my stretches and make sure I work out later, need to organize the rest of my week before I take off again thinking I've got an appointment on the wrong day, gotta keep the file transfer going. Part of my publishing goal is having free reading material to support it, and dang I refuse to lose all that work. I'm thinking about ways I can make reading more '3D' with ebooks- you know, like you can click on blogs and get easter eggs. So much I want to do. But today I have to get back on the laundry before we run out of underwear.
This got way too long. Sorry about that. I'm going to walk away and forget it. You should, too.
