having a baby can shine new lights on unexpected things. this year, I’ve received only two royalty payments for book sales; one for $8.31 and another for $0.01. createspace is holding $31.00 in unpaid royalties for me until it reaches $35. sitting down and doing actually honest math, I have made approximately $300 in profits selling my books since I began as an independent author.

this number used to bother me, but like many parts of my fragile ego, it has drifted away into the ether of what my life used to be before this past june. I never wrote stories to make money. reading this blog, I would say that its obvious that I’m not concerned with an online presence, or pushing a personal brand, marketing myself or my products.

a career in creation without a day job is still a lofty goal but not one that ever kept me awake at night. yet the mind still plays tricks on me from time to time. it tells me what I consider success is nothing at all and that there is still so much work to do. it says that I have been wasting my time.

staring at the child, I cannot feel this way anymore. those self conscious voices are slowly fading away with my twenties. since june, I’ve been more inspired than ever before. with short stories and poems and proposals for new novels. five year plans have been written up, changed, then thrown away only to start over.

at the same time, one of my peers in writing offered to read my work for the first time. not only did they provide good feedback, they decided to help edit the manuscript. as nice as a gesture this was, the book was already out. in fact, I had asked this person to read my work, whether finished or not, and they never did. when I brought it up, they said it was the size of the words in my first novel that kept them from reading it.

you may be thinking why I didn’t find someone to edit and read the books before I put them out. the bottom line is, that no one wanted to. so, I did it on my own. in my own weird mania, I decided to write and edit everything without asking for a second opinion. it seemed that the people I surrounded myself with were just not interested, until now.

the second novel fixed that problem but in their editing, they took me aside and said that I had a huge problem with dialogue formatting; meaning that it was hard to know who was saying what in a conversation. their delivery was harsh enough to finally push me to make those nagging changes.

I have decided to go back and revise both revenant sun and the black eclipse. I remembered all the gripes I heard from people staring at my book as I told them what it was about; that the book is really big, the words are really small and the conversations are hard to follow.

the design choices I made for my stories made sense at the time, but the reality was that I needed to learn how to communicate those ideas better. dreams and dialogue that flow like poems can be attained with fewer words and even silence from the characters themselves. years later, I can see the difference in a matter of minutes.

I’m not alone in this. I have help at last. as much as the delayed editing (and somewhat smug critique) bothered me, those feelings of anger and irritation disappeared once I stepped back inside my home and the child was back in my arms. for once, I am working with no self imposed deadlines and with a purpose outside of myself.

the first manuscript will be split into two books; the black eclipse and part two, wasteland heart. revenant sun will remain the same, only with reformatting of the dialogue to clear up any confusing pieces of the story. the chapters will be short, concise, with clear dialogue, larger font and the story will be retold with all the experience gained from four years of writing, self editing and reader feedback.  

I think about the child and what she will think of the pages I spent years putting together. even if I never get to retire and work from a computer full time, I want her to look at the books the same as the ones on the shelf at the store, rather than an imperfect stack of paper with tiny words. it brings to mind the Rebuild of Evangelion. in no way am I comparing my work to that of Hideaki Anno. but the first seeds of that book were planted when watching that show, late at night. life moves in strange circles. I find myself more content than ever with going back and fixing those errors, revising the past and rebuilding the stage for part three…

time to get back to work.

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cheers.