Last night I was feeling depressed. My huba-friend – who isn’t a fan of my case drawings – told me I wasn’t doing enough or writing in a focused way and that I was spreading myself too thin. He said I should focus on one project and make sure that by the end of June, I have something new to publish and show. I guess I was depressed about all of it because it felt like he thought I wasn’t doing enough and didn’t know where I was going.
It’s true, I am not sure where I am going. All I know is that I wake up every day feeling like I have so much to do and I am chipping away at my internal to-do list. The path isn’t clear and I don’t know what running this website and drawing legal comics will ultimately achieve, but every day I am doing it I do feel a small sense of accomplishment. It is hard to put into words why I am doing it and what compels me but it is what I driven to do. I keep telling myself that it has to be an accumulation of time and that if I just keep at it, I will go somewhere one day. But what if I don’t? What if I’m just that statistic about how 99% of self-published authors fail? I don’t know what to think about that. As someone who is constantly thinking about the future, it’s terrifying to do so at this moment because the road ahead is foggy. So all I can do is take small steps. I know he doesn’t see the value or understand why I draw case comics but it’s something I am compelled to do. Maybe it will go nowhere but maybe that’s ok too. Maybe eventually the path will reveal itself.
I am also feeling very trapped on how to market my book. Maybe I need to come up with a more solid marketing plan. I have read a couple of things about being self-published and the need to define your own success and to build a marketing plan around that. I have to think about what all this means. All of a sudden I am thinking that I printed way too many books. I should look into independent bookstores and how to get my book into them. Or I don’t know. Times like this I wish I had a co-worker to bounce ideas off of.
