Independent Artists Just Do It! It takes as long as it takes!

Not done yet, but getting there!

I was just watching an interview with a few independent film makers and it struck me that INDIE writers and other medium artists have much in common.  Link below

In this video they talked about how they had to struggle to make the film happen.  I started this little story about a little lake back in 2012. I sent it out to a publisher that kept it so long, I had forgotten about it. I received a lovely and encouraging letter back giving me suggestions on how to proceed A YEAR LATER ALMOST. For my first attempt with this story, I was very impressed. All said and done though, they decided to change the focus of their next publishings. That is how it works in their world, They have so much money to work with, and can take only so many books and they do their best to be sure it is a book for that market at that time. You are not competing with just the other authors, you are also competing with algorithms and analytics and so on. They want to make every book count because many of the publishers are feeling the punch from ebooks (a trend that has gone up and then down again recently). It is likely why, they expect any new author to have a good following before they will consider publishing your books.

So I wrote this book in 2012 and it will be out in 2020. That is 8 years in the making, but you know what? From what I understand from independent film makers, it is the same for them. When you do it yourself, it doesn't just happen over night!

For me, I wrote the book, learned a new program to edit the photos, and another program to format it, THEN I decided I didn't like the photos and would illustrate it. When I finally had it edited enough to make the words fit the pages, I realized the word count was wrong, so that meant changing the story line again, from there, I finally get the images the way I wanted them, and when I looked at the format, price-wise, it was too high SOOOO back to the drawing board again. I was able to reformat to get the size acceptable with an acceptable price with a TINY margin of profit, only to realize I was going to have to make some compromises with the images because I could not use the font size they requested to do the white on black! This is the nature of the beast when you work independently. It is ALL on you.

Has it been worth it? For anyone who has a vision, and makes it happen, no matter how long they plod along, or how successful it is, I think they will always have the same answer...YES! (Listen to what Cher has to say when she started acting and when to the first screening of a movie she was in!).

To do what you set out to do, no matter what obstacles are in your way, but to still persevere and make it happen, well, that is when one knows the satisfaction of success!

I know this is my FIRST published book and I am making TONS of mistakes, however when I look back at where I was and what I knew about any of this 8 years ago, well, I am satisfied plus there is still SOOO much more to learn which is fun! Nothing boring about this process. It is huge and it takes time and yes, it can mean sacrifices, however don't the more satisfying and worthwhile things in life come with more challenges? Isn't that just the nature of the beast? If you have always wanted to write a book and illustrate it, or co author or whatever, THEN DO IT!

​Nothing to stop you these days but yourself. Even if it is one hour a day until it is done in 50 years, you are still following your passion and making it happen and what better way to feed your soul?

Link to Video