A Twenty-Something's Existential Crisis About Publishing?

The other day I went out for coffee with my parents and my little brother, and among other things we talked about creative career aspirations. They were wondering whether I still wanted to be an author, since when I was a little kid, author was always the first thing on my list of dream jobs. I thought I'd go a bit more in depth about where my thoughts are at now, since they've changed a lot since I was five.

I was sure when I was younger that I would be one of those prodigies that was published at thirteen. My family was super impressed with my writing skill, after all, so I was sure I could wow the world. I never actually got around to that, as much as I stalked the careers of young published authors, but that was okay. I've written before about how I was glad I wasn't a teen published author, for a variety of reasons.

But things change, as they do. There was a while when I was in university that I kind of lost writing for a while. I learned a lot of things about life, but also was frozen with fear and didn't write much of anything for four years, and wondered if I even counted as a writer at all, kind of gave up on the dream for a while. It wasn't until I let go of my fears, perfectionism, and own personal pressures that I could actually enjoy writing again for what it was to me.

And now that I have found myself writing again, and really liking it, a lot, I've reconsidered over the years my thoughts on publishing. For one, I know a lot more about publishing than I did then. When I was younger, publishing was always presented as the obvious next step for someone who loved writing. Now, I understand that loving writing and publishing don't necessarily have to intertwine. I also know now that publishing is a business, first, and being an author is a job. Also, it's a business that doesn't necessarily pay well. Nicole Brinkley recently posted this super informative thread on Twitter on how authors get paid, if you want a glimpse into how a small piece of the business works. Tl;dr VERY few writers are able to work full time as authors. As Nicole put it:

For most authors, writing is a professional hobby—something they love but that cannot pay the bills.

For full-time authors, it’s increasingly important that people buy their books, or they might look up one day to no new book deals, no royalties, and no way to buy groceries.

— Nicole Brinkley @ Winter Institute (@nebrinkley) July 23, 2018

So the question I've been asking myself is, what do I want from this? My dad's question was, could a writer be happy just writing and enjoying that craft, and not pursue publishing at all? When I think about it, I totally think I could. Writing is what I like, after all. 

HOWEVER, I am also aware of how I let fear get in the way a lot of the time. Maybe I'm just too scared of all of the unknowns of pursuing publishing. And I have experienced the joy that can come from sharing stories with a wider audience, and the beautiful connections that can be born out of that. And I'm sure there are tons of lovely new experiences to be had in the path of publishing and pursuing an author career that I'm not even aware of yet.

And then there's the fact that there is not just one way to get your story out there, as so many things on the Internet have demonstrated: serial stories posted on websites, comic stories shared through Tumblr updates, self-published things that rise to stardom...

I don't have a good conclusion other than to say that I don't know? I don't really know what I think about publishing right now. Things I do know: I like writing, and in some way, shape or form, I'm pretty sure I want to use my stories to connect with other people. Whether that be a large or small circle is to be determined.

What are your thoughts on publishing? What kind of creative ways have you seen people get their stories out there? If you have pursued a career as an author, what advice would you have for people pursuing the same career path?

Book Blogging, Sharing Writing, and Other Scary Things

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a couple months now... thought I'd finally post it.
 
Summer just whizzed by, and all of a sudden it's almost October [it's November!! ] and I've gone three weeks without writing a blog post (sorry!) In case you missed it, I spent most of August doing reviews for Women in Translation Month, and I also did a review of Anahareo's incredible autobiography Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl, which includes pictures of my family's annual trip to Riding Mountain National Park.

Since then, I've started my final year of university, got yet another job, opened a new bank account, read and thought way too much about media and the way it manipulates our brains, biked a bunch of places, hung out with friends, and somewhere in there the scariest thing of all, writing.

I also have not been blogging, obviously. I have been thinking a lot about what I should blog about, though.

I've wanted to talk about book reviewing, in response to this post, and the bizarre concept that there are book bloggers who review every book they read?? I often feel like a fake book blogger, that I kind of stumbled into book reviewing after goofing off as a teenager for a number of years. I don't really know how this thing is really supposed to work. The type of book blogger world that you review every book you read is so distant and strange to me. I think so differently about the books I review, if I did that with every book I read it would ruin my reading experience and make me want to read even less than I do. (I have been stuck on Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Ueashi for about two weeks now. Although I did read Tash Hearts Tolstoy somewhere in there, and that was pretty cute.)

I also have very specific reasons for publishing reviews on my blog - usually because I think it's a book that people may not have heard of and I want to make them aware of something new, not reinforce or go against ideas they have about a book they already read. Something I don't get is when there are a million reviews of the same book and people think they still need to put their voice out there. I know it's the nature of the beast that is a book blog, that you get more views if you post about more popular books, but it's a stupid system that lets a lot of really good books fall through the cracks.

The other thing I've been thinking about is sharing work. I finished the rewrite of the draft I finished last November this summer, and sent it off to a few people, with the knowledge that some of these people wouldn't have time to read it, and wouldn't necessarily critique it because that's not the kind of readers they are. Did I do that purposefully? Yes, probably. (Okay, definitely.) Sharing work is scary. I get so panicky every time I hit send on a document. It is weird how writing can involve both being entirely solitary and opening your thoughts and ideas up to the whole world. There are these "one line Wednesday" things on Twitter where you share a line of your Work in Progress on Twitter, and even that terrifies me. I don't know how people are constantly sharing their work on Twitter and elsewhere. I know it's my own fault that it scares me so much, that I really just need to practice.

And that's another thing - why is writing so hard? Why haven't I figured out how to do this? I've been doing this for over fifteen years. You would think I would know things by now. I mean, I've figured some stuff out, like telling myself to just write 500 words is a good way to trick myself into getting started and end up writing a lot more than that. But I still agonize over that actually starting part, I don't have a regular writing routine, and I still don't really know how to share my work with people and invite real critique.

I mean, this is the point where I should say, hey, want to read a terrible second draft about friendship, family and scary transitions? But I don't even want to do that, because it's too scary. There are too many things that could happen after that. I'll just keep my MS to myself, thanks, rereading it every so often as a nice reminder that I can spit words semi-coherently on a page. But then there's also the deep desire in me to share this with another human, to have someone read what I wrote and get it, get what I'm trying to say and in that connect our human experiences on earth.

And now I'm going to share this, I guess? In the hopes that someone might comment and assure me that I'm not the only one who thinks these things?