It's my time!

So I get up this morning, this final day of vacation and am bummed out of my wits. I am totally fed up of being broke and have had enough! It's time I do something about it.

I admit that while I've had plenty business ideas in the past have been happy to pass them on to someone else, I know I can develop something and make it great. But everything I can think of requires lots of money, something that I have extremely little of. Lately I've been thinking of my writing and how I've only tackled it in a half-assed way. I've never seriously sought out an agent or a publisher. So these past two weeks that I've been on vacation I've been sending out queries and such. Nothing positive yet but at least 2 nice rejections and 2 promises. Believe me, it's hard work. It's like throwing darts blind folded -- you never know what you're going to hit. Already I know how impossible it is to understand the North American literary market from a country in the Caribbean. It seems like you have to be there in the thick of things in order to know whom to bug and when. Oh, that's another thing, if you don't understand the reading period during the year, forget it. I got one response from a publisher that said I am to check back in November to see if my story was accepted. November! By then I'll be on the street corner begging a change.

So I've been thinking of this self-publishing thing. I go back and forth with it and I've even tried it. I'm proud to say I loaded a bunch of short stories on Kindle and without any form of advertising or publicity, I've sold 29 copies. It's no money, but it's 29 copies among the thousands and thousands of novels and stories on Kindle. Not bad. Not bad at all. If I could only sell 3,000 more a month, I'd be set. LOL! Kindle takes a chunk of money but it's worth it if your intention is for instant publication.

What if I do my novels myself, publish and advertise them and see how that goes? Then when I get some volume going, I can approach an agent. I know few persons have succeeded at this and as a matter of fact, there are established authors who are going the self-publishing way and keeping the money for themselves. It's not easy and it means working remotely and finding the money for ads and a site, but it's certainly doable especially if I tackle one part of the project at a time. My only drawback is me thinking my stories are good enough. It takes the courage of a lion to fight off these nerves.

You know what? I think I'm going to do it. If it fails then I move on to something else.

Onward!

My writing life

I am at the point of total frustration and now truly believe that there is a certain amount of courage that's needed to write and publish. To do this successfully, you must know that your work is good and be willing and able to submit, submit, submit. I'm not sure I have any of that. I mean, I think my work is good. People say so, though I would feel better if I heard this from people I didn't know or people who were professionals. That I could get from a publisher which is next to impossible especially when you don't have much to publish my work in the Caribbean and I'm not quite sure which ones to approach. An email to a publisher is almost always met with promises or a rejection because you need an agent. And from browsing on the net, agents seemed to be so filled that they're not taking new writers and in fact, several sites I've seen imply that you must have something published first. Huh? That's what I'm trying to do!

Anyway, as I write this rant, I'm trying to work out how to get my feet in the door without actually being in the United States knocking on them all. It's very tricky and now I understand why Jamaicans who want to succeed feel they must leave in order to do so. It seems if you're not in the thick of things, then things can get pretty thin.

So what am I going to do about it? Submit, submit, submit. I have stories and I think I have a voice. I know that if I get an agent I will get published because my stories are good. I just need to get my foot or even my big toe in the door to make it work. And so I write.