How Did I Get Here?

It's been a bit more than a month since I started my new career as an indie author. Of course the only thing that makes me an indie author is me claiming to be one, since I haven't published anything yet, and I guess some indie authors would say that the kindle scout program is not really self publishing. But I digress.

I've been happy this month. I've written in a much higher pace than ever before. So far this is one of the best things that ever happened to my writing career.

It's worth mentioning how I got here.

I was looking for some writer blogs. I was just approaching the task of sending out query letters to agents for "Sleepless", and the daunting task made me look for advice from my peers. In a "top X blogs for writers" list I found one blog for JA Konrath.

Here it is: http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.il/

I've read the most recent post, and the one before it. Then I read the "bio". Okay, this was some "self publishing" author who made it. I was used to disregarding this as "something I would never be able to do", since I had learned the hard way that I can't market for shit.

So I switched to another blog, which bored me, then I switched back and read some more.

How many posts before I started muttering "This is doable"? Four? Five?

And that's the thing that Konrath does so well. He makes it feel doable. He clarifies that as long as you know how to write, and as long as you're prepared to work hard for a long time, you will succeed. And that basically the main thing that you have to do is write a lot.

After reading twenty or thirty posts I was completely hooked. I bought a bad "how to self publish" book. Then I bought a good one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OS96EYU/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

I e-mailed some people who didn't really understand what I was so excited about (but they were polite about it). I scared my wife, who knows that I'm sometimes prone to impulsive decisions, and she made me promise that I won't self publish "Sleepless" that week. I bored people to tears with explanations about the wonderful era that we're in, and how writing has stopped being a dead-end job.

And I started writing again. It was great.