WHY I BECAME AN INDIE WRITER

People always ask, when you say you are a writer, "Have you ever been published?"

This is especially true when you are an "Indie" writer, independently producing your own books.  The idea behind the question, I think, is two fold.  1) Okay, you're a writer, but how serious are you?  And 2) Are you any good?  Being good at something, in our society, is measured by how much people are willing to pay you. Or if they are willing to pay you at all.

My personal opinion about becoming an indie writer is that it is wise for the writer to have proven herself by at least having sold something to a publisher.  One doesn't have to be famous, one doesn't even have to have sold enough to give up the day job.  But one should at least once have submitted some sort of writing to a publisher who paid for the privilege.  One must prove oneself worthy.

That is my prejudice, and it may be a cruel one because getting published isn't easy.  It isn't easy even to get a response from a publisher.

It is trial by fire, as is acting or creating art.  You tear off a piece of your soul and offer it to people who don't want it, and usually you get ignored for the effort.  There is a reason that there is such a high suicide rate among creative people.  It isn't because you have to be crazy to be creative (although that helps).  It's that you have to be very tough indeed to endure the amount of rejection that comes with plying the trade.

I am very tough.

I have been rejected many times.

I have continued to ply the trade.

And I did get published.

And then, despite the notion that it's easier to get published once someone has slipped up and published your work once, it is not easier, not really.  But I eventually did it again.  And again.

It is good if one can find one's nitch.  If you find your nitch, it does get easier.

And it is good to take the advice of writing what you know.  This helps you find your nitch.

I was published in several genres, but the one with which I was most familiar was the Seventh-Day Adventist youth market, because I had been a Seventh-Day Adventist youth, and boy did I have stories to tell!

The Jesus, Jesus Picture and Other Stories is a collection of the stories I sold to SDA publishers.  Several of my stories won prizes, two of them were published in a book.  

I proved myself to myself.

But when it came to publishing my books, I have chosen to bypass publishers because it takes so long to get through the process, because some of the process strikes me as unfairly biased against writers, and because I simply love to design and illustrate my own books.  What I have given up is publicity.  My fame is spreading slowly because I don't have a publisher behind me.  Maybe in time, after I have satisfied my urge to produce full blown books all by myself, I will submit again to a book publisher.  But for now, I'm happy being an Indie writer.

So in case I failed to mention this clearly before, my soon to be released new book is The Jesus, Jesus Picture and Other Stories.

I'll let you know when it is available.