My apologies for not posting a lot over the summer. Here it is the last day of August and I realized I had not posted a thing on my own webpage.
Now I could list a lot of excuses, but they would be just that…excuses. In the words of a good friend of mine, stop being a victim with excuses and take radical responsibility for every aspect of your life, and especially your career.
So I am, pleading for your forgiveness and hoping all my readers didn’t abandon me.
Since the author spotlight feature fell through this month, I’ll subject you to my author ramblings instead. You’ve been warned…rant ahead!
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I see this a lot of social media and I hear this a lot from other authors all the time. The agonizing question of how to handle bad reviews, negative comments on your social media posts, lagging sales, etc.
I’m not immune to the self-pity party either. When I see someone didn’t like my book, gives a bad review, or says things like “Liked the book, but I am not sure I will follow the series” or book sales lag, or I get my royalty check and can only treat myself to a Starbucks coffee with the proceeds…well, my confidence takes a hit.
It’s a natural emotion and ALL authors go through this. Daily there are posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. about this very topic when an author wonders if it’s even worth it to continue writing. And it makes me sad that someone (again, I’m not immune to the same thoughts and emotions) feels so distraught that they would contemplate giving up their life’s dream.
So what do I do to keep myself from giving up the writing career that has been my one deep desire, my soul purpose?
I’ve been told, ignore the reviews. Or only read the 4 and 5 star reviews. Well, I can’t do that. It’s physically impossible for me to see there’s a review and NOT read it. Besides, reading good reviews makes me happy. To know that my story touched someone’s imagination, that it resonated with someone else…THAT is sheer bliss!
Therefore, I had to make a change in my own thoughts and deeply seated beliefs to accept that “I am not everyone’s cup of tea” and “I have to be okay with that” because for every person who doesn’t like my story, there are others that do.
And it is for those others that I write.
To maintain my own sense of worth, my own confidence, I can’t allow others to bring me down. I wasn’t put on this earth to reach everyone. I wasn’t put on this earth to surrender my imagination, my dreams. I wasn’t put on this earth to deny my soul purpose of creating stories of fiction and fantasy that have a glimmer of hope, light, and truth to shine in a dark world filled with fear and chaos.
I am a storyteller who is passionate about guardian angels and want to bring divine light and love to the world through fantasy and fiction.
So dear readers, I hope and pray that my stories, my characters connect with you and delight you. I hope you await the next book with bated breath. It is for you that I write (and the fact that the characters are not going to let me rest until their stories are told). For you, I give you my heart and soul served up on a page.
For all others, thank you for giving me a taste but I do understand that…
Love and virtual hugs to all! Until next time…
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To sum it up – it was a series of unfortunate events which ended happily ever after.