March 21
Familiarity
Some mountains feel achievable because you’ve already climbed something similar. When I look at how every scene I rewrite for Demon Arms is turning out @ 3 times longer, I keep getting hit with doubt. I’m not even halfway through and I’m over 127,000 words and I feel kind of sick inside. Because I’m familiar with a certain wordcount. I’m familiar with a certain response to my older works, aka, my moldy brain writing. This has been a huge source of concern for me as a writer, as a creator-just as a human being. I have regained my very broken brain back and I’m worried my writing is now alien to who I used to be.
I personally think it’s a positive change, but does what I like even fucking matter when I’m trying to make a living? Broken Sadie has been tested and tried and has a fanbase who loves those old stories. Can not so broken Sadie live up to that? It’s an unpleasant feeling, these uncertainties. The reality is, all I can do is forge forward and hope people like my new style and ultimately forgive me for not being capable of consistency. I have a feeling everyone else is far more forgiving on me than I am.
That is something familiar that I don’t enjoy; my history of kicking my own ass over pointless shit. My brain changed. I have no control over it. Keep creating, yeah? I have to stop looking backwards for reference to feel validated in what I’m doing now. I just need to be in now, okay with now, and let all that other shit go.
Hello sadie, love your writing and books. Why are so many titles unavailable for kindle at Amazon? Damn them! Your faithful fan, Rob
Hey Rob! Great to hear from you!
Uh, let’s see. Okay partly it’s because Amazon would ban the fuck out of many of my books if I tried (so I don’t try cuz I don’t want to give them an excuse to ban me as an author for not following the rules they don’t bother to actually list.) The other part is because I decided betting on Amazon to carry me through as a writer was unrealistic.
It’s not just competition on the platform, it’s the fact that Amazon doesn’t usually profit that much with their sale’s model. Amazon has this habit as a company of throwing money away so that they destroy the competition– and yeah, they’re doing a great job destroying the competition– but it doesn’t mean their sales model is actually sound. I don’t want to rely on a company who could decide to dump the KU program in a few years, leaving a giant void they created in the market when they devaulued e-books. It’s just not business savvy in the long term. So I keep a lot of my stories exclusively in my subscription website. That way, no matter what happens to Amazon, my readers will know how to find me and my books. I still use KU when it’s a story that will pass their censors, but there comes a point when to use Amazon is to compete against Amazon, and I need to keep that in mind as a writer who wants to last in this business.