Focus Locked: Target Acquired

If you compare yourself with others,

 you may become vain and bitter;

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

--Max Ehrmann

As 'tis the season and all that, I've been doing a fair bit of pondering about my focus as a writer. Why DO I do this...thing, where in I pour my guts out onto the page, subject the result to ridicule via rejection, review and rantings from dissatisfied readers. The grueling, sometimes disheartening editing and revision process follows even after I've managed to find someone willing to touch what I've written. I try to re-craft the story by blurb and cover art next, knocking my head against the wall of re-re-creation of my characters and story into pictures and a few pithy sentences that will make that elusive unicorn--the Average Reader--pick up the thing and read it.

Then OMG OMG OMG RELEASE DAY, that seems so Climactic..... until you realize how anti-- it is.

And then...obsessively checking rankings and ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads until figuring out that you probably should stop doing that, if you plan to keep your self-esteem intact.

And then: the promotional bonanza/blitz/extravaganza/blog tour-o-ramas begin as you beg, plead and gnash your teeth until people agree to at least read your blurb and give you a "thumbs up" on a book site.  While trying very hard not to throw your laptop into the drywall as you watch books you've read and discarded as simple/bad/trite/formula climb charts you can only dream about associating with your own, hard-working author personna.

Do not get me wrong here gang. I'm not whining. But every single one of you/us has been in these various positions at various times in our "process," hoping that our indie/self/small pubbed masterpiece will catch the wandering eyes of those agents who've been "snapping up" all the "new adult" novels and slinging them up on Those Lists. And don't kid me. I know we all hear words like "St. Martins's, Kensington, Harper Collins Penguin (some of you the Big H and/or Carina) and get all dewey in our lady parts.

So, what to do? How to focus? How to fix your sights on a goal and work your way towards it with all the "do this, no do that. Blog. Don't Blog. Self-pub. No, just write and you'll get heard." advice swirling around us like a noxious mosquito cloud that simply will not disperse?

I try to draw parallels between the trajectory of my writing career and my brewery's success. They both started pretty much about the same time, back in 2008/2009. When I used to walk into Whole Foods, or Meijer, or Kroger, or (in Southeast Michigan) Busch's Fresh Market and Hillers I would go straight for the beer cooler and gaze, longingly at all the "shelf space." Which is our term in the retail goods business for the highly sought after real estate at eye level or near by for our products. I would plan, and plot and blog and study and read and brew a little with my brewer, then go back to planning, plotting, blogging, face booking--the usual stuff. Hoping to make that break. I never got red in the face furious over the stacks of Bells' Brewing Oberon or the Founders Dirty Bastard, or any of the other Michigan brews.  No, I understood where they came from, how they got there and was willing to bide my time and provide a product people wanted, trusted and loved.

Conversely I would go into a bookstore (you remember those, right?) and get so upset I'd have to walk right out again. All those books, so many of them just crappy in my English Major's opinion but making zillions, with  "expansion packs" and gaggles of readers surrounding their Big New York Paid for Promo Table Right in the Front, or whatever the hell. I would nearly choke over their....success.

So I have been taking a few steps back from that self-righteous nonsense, and thinking hard about the way I feel when I see the entire cooler filled with Bud/Miller/Coors and the other cooler that I must share with twenty, or thirty or, yes fifty craft microbreweries.  I don't want to scream and make a scene in the beer aisle. Those companies have had years, decades, in some case centuries to get where they are. I, on the other hand, have had about four years.  We've come a long damn way in that time, and are acknowledged as one of the few breweries to: 1.  turn a profit in year one and 2. expand after 18 months.

As a writer, I am ahead of some of you. But am way behind the successes of many more of you. It's how things work. People write books and become successful,  working hard to write more books and become even more successful. I'm sure Ms. James has her next set of books ready as we speak, no?  You guys EARNED your place, just like the Boston Brewing Company, Yeungling, Shiner, Bells, Dog Fish Head, and all those guys did. Working hard, taking the steps, doing the time, and starting over again determined to craft quality and make it better every time.

I have some goals, sure. And one of them involves writing a mainstream, political, thriller set in the not so distant future when the wealthy upper class of women suddenly become infertile and the government takes over of the once natural process of procreation. A bit of a Handmaid's Tale/Logan's Run/Children of Men mash up if you will sans the creepy sex surrogate stuff. I am going outside my comfort zone with it and will shop it to some of those panty-dampening Big Dogs just to see if I can be heard.  However, lucky for me, I am getting heard by a few more, every day, and get up every morning determined to hit whatever stage I'm at with whatever book and whatever promotion and beer of the month and keep gathering them in. One reader and drinker at a time.

UP FOR BEST ROMANTIC SUSPENSE OF 2012 AT LOVES ROMANCES CAFE!

Don't give up. But don't let the success of others discourage you. It's tempting. I know. I've done it. (And I still can't get past That Table in Barnes & Noble so I just don't go there anymore).  But I've got my target acquired now and plan to hit that bullseye, once my dues are paid.
cheers
Liz

Shameless Promotional Moment: Healing Hearts, the launch novella for Decadent Publishing's Challenge Series has been receiving lots of great reviews. The most recent is here:
http://literatiliteraturelovers.com/2013/01/10/review-excerpt-healing-hearts-challenge-series-1-by-liz-crowe/

AND because I really do want to know the answer: Tell me what you do when you feel like all that you're doing (writing, revising, editing, submitting, revising, editing, promoting, writing) feels like a long slog to nowhere?  Because we ALL get that way....c'mon, give it up.

****all photos are the property of the author****