The Dangers of Turning Pro

I started out writing not to make money, but to get the stories out of my head, to see where they would end up.  And after six or so of them, I decided, like a lot of authors, to try to turn pro.  This was a blessing and a curse.  I was out there!  People were buying my work, I had sales, I had validation, I had an audience?  Now the need to perform had replaced the joy of just writing, doing it for myself. I had taken a love and turned it into a job.  I rushed the second book out, hoping to catch a demanding audience.  But I pushed the second book too hard, and burned out.  And when it didn't sell like gangbusters, I started to fret.  I compulsively watched my sales, watched and watched, mistakenly considering each sales a judgment on me and my worth as an author.  But that ignores the market.  There is something like a thousand new titles a week on Amazon, probably more.  The signal to noise ratio goes way up and even somebody like Shakespeare would be hard to find today.  Oh yes there are lightning in a bottle writers, (Ready Player One, The Martian come to mind) but other writers have been at it for years and way more than my two titles.  The rational mind knew to play the long game, but the heart likes to beat fast.

The problem is these realizations only come AFTER the soul is wounded from the arrows tipped with the poison of dollars signs. Wounds that take a long time to heal.  I'm not fully wounded, but I have at least pulled out the arrow.  Admitting you have a problem is the first step towards change.

So I post this as an end.  Not an end to my writing career, but an ending to worrying about being professional.  I'm going back to writing for me.  I'll publish via Mostly Normal Publishing when I think it's good, but that's not going to be my focus.  My focus now, is me. 

And the stories that have to get out of me.
I'll post them here and up on Holimoren.com so you can ride along with me.