The Word Cloud

I'm the next big thing waiting to happen and I'm sick of waiting. Other cliches - If at first you don't succeed... Well blah-de-blah and scooby-do, but you get my drift.

It wasn't always thus. I used to write for magazines with some success and I once beat 17000 others into first place in a short story competition. Not only that, but after publication I released the film rights to it. But all that was a while ago and each day that passes takes me further away from it. Sometimes I curse the day I set my sights higher and went for the big one.

 Job done - sorted, I thought as I sent it off. That was then. The now of it is that I've been on the receiving end of 53 rejection letters. FIFTY THREE! Shouldn't that tell me something? Am I talented? Heck, talent oozes from every pore. That mindset has hardened like concrete, as it should for all of us. No self doubts in this boy's mind.

But I should have done my homework. I wrote a hard-hitting self-help book for men that invites them to reconnect with chauvinism's core values and then found that 90% of the publishing industry has been taken over by wimmin. I didn't do the math, lesson learned.

Another hard earned lesson was not to tell people what you are doing. This waiting game is limbo-land. You're not succeeding, but you're not failing either. Failure only swings by when you give up, but non-writers don't see it that way and after a while, they stop asking, "How's the book going and fix you with a look of pity. Believe me when I say that no man can stand to be on the wrong end of one of those.

That's why I'm succumbing to the siren call of self-publishing. The reasoning is twofold. Firstly, it's all about making a bigger splash; about shouting it from the rooftops and hoping that my tribituary gets picked up by the mainstream. Secondly, it's vanity - of course it is. We all have it to a greater or lesser extent and 'tis both blessing and a curse. In my case vanity is fuelling the motivation so I'll label it a blessing - at least for now.

I'm going to blog the process from soup to nuts - not only the hard facts of it, but the thoughts and emotions running parallel. Will it lead to a life of ease and plenty, or will I stumble and fall? I don't know. The only thing I do know is that nothing is going to happen unless you try it. So for those who are thinking of doing something similar, but might be fearful of the unknown, follow this blog and see what happens.