In case you haven't noticed, I dropped off the face of the Earth for quite some time. My last post here was March 28th which is about the same for Twitter and Facebook. This is really horrible for promoting which is funny because one of my goals for 2012 was to promote more. I suck with goals, really I do.
Anyway, I'm back in a sense. I never really left to be honest. I simply did not have the motivation to promote. There I said it: I did not have the motivation to post.
Why? Well, there's a few reasons and I'm going to be completely honest, bording on blunt if you will:
1) I have no idea how to properly promote and the whole thing scares the crap out of me.
2) I'm honestly afraid of what people will say about my work.
3) I kind of became really obsessed with the 12 novels in 12 months challenge and forgot everything else.
4) I've been exceptionally depressed.
Let me explain those a bit.
1) I don't know how to promote. Sure I've read Locke's book on how to sell a million ebooks in five months. Yeah, I've read other marketing books on how to use social media to your advantage. I've never really understood it. No, that's not right. I tried and failed a few times and can't seem to pick myself back up. I'll eventually keep trying though. Plus I always feel like I'm spamming people when I talk about my stuff and I don't like spamming people.
2) I'm afraid of what people will say. There are people who have read my work and loved it. They are the reason I started this crazy journey. Then there are the people who comment with "I had to force myself to finish it." For me, that's a pretty big blow. I'll admit, I don't have a tough skin, well, not yet anyway. I mean yes, the accompanying stars on that comment was a 2 and the book does have a 3.5 star rating which is good for something that was written in one month and edited too quickly for my liking. On the same book I get the comment of "I respect this book and the way it was written. It caught my attention and had the perfect amounts of realism that made the ending all the more tragic. I loved this book that was filled with the best memories we could possibly have during the holidays.....and the most horrible..." which makes me feel great. But there's still that nagging fear of what if people don't like it. I have to work on it.
3) Ah, ha, yes. I've become obsessed with the 12 novels in 12 months challenge to the point where I've written 6 novels this year. Let me reiterate that: I've written 6 120,000 word (or more) novels this year. Actually, since March. Oddly, none of them were book 3 of Tale of the Twins which I planned to finish this year.
4) I've been depressed. Life has been horrible this year and I can't shake it at all. I'm trying to get out of the funk, really I am. But the only way I can is by writing and staying in my fantasy worlds. This does not help with promoting because it seems like everything I've done in the past two years (going on three in March) has failed and that makes me more upset. I'm kind of half happy and half sad right now reading the reviews on 'Have a Bloody Christmas' on the Nook website.
With all that being said, well, I'm kind of here. I make no promises on how often I will post but I see a scheduler for post settings so that might help. Did I mention I'm forgetful and quite unmotivated when it comes to promoting? Ha.
Anyway, I decided to come back because of the one goal for this year that I refuse to fail: National Novel Writing Month 2012. I will get 200,000 words. I will not let anything stop me.
I will also write about my insane attempts and more of what I've been doing this year in the next month. I'll also put together some blogs (probably tonight then schedule them off) on character design, plot, setting and tone.
I leave you with this quote (varied from person to person over the years): "A good author has written 1,000,000 words." Yeah? I'm 30,000 away from 2,000,000. Am I a 'good author' yet? ;) More on that later. Till then, Happy Halloween, good night and don't let the demons from Hell steal your soul.
