The Life of a Novelist

I remember when I was a teenager, just having become a James Bond fan (from watching the movies), I had just heard that the movies were not the first creation of James Bond.  A fellow by the name of Ian Fleming had created the character in a series of 12 novels and two books of collected short stories in the 1950s and 1960s.  I later found out that Fleming had also written a very famous children's story called Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang.  On top of all of this, he had also written a couple of non-fiction works.  Needless to say, the author of James Bond apparently stayed very busy.

But at the time, I never realized just how busy.

The truth of the matter is that many people -- I used to count myself amongst these -- always think that the life of a novelist cannot be all that bad:  being able to stay at home and create fun stories from his own mind, going to various book signings and meeting very many cool people (many of them, devoted fans of his work), being able to set your own hours and not have to work directly for anyone else other than himself, being able to just sit back and watch the money roll in, being able to travel to all sorts of cool places with your laptop computer, etc.

But having really focused on the completion of my 2018: An Uncivil War novel has truly opened my eyes to the endeavor:  It is anything but easy; it is one of the most arduous tasks I've ever accepted in my entire life. Adding to this the fact that I've also been working a full-time job really complicates the whole process as well.

Here is the truth of the matter:  First I spent a good part of my life being influenced by the topic at hand, which was not really work, but natural inspiration.  The work did not come until I began to figure out how all of this inspiration and influence would translate into an intriguing story acted out by (hopefully) realistic characters.  Next, I had to spend countless hours trying to put together the framework, a working outline of what my story would be -- not knowing that the plot would countlessly change as I began to tell my tale.

Next came the writing of the story.  I could only go so far before I hit a wall, not knowing what I truly needed to know to make my story authentic.  Thus came the very next difficult part of my endeavor:  researching subject materials and scheduling and conducting interviews with people who could help me establish the much-needed authenticity.  In a perfect world, it would only take one contact with each person.  But as the story unfolds, I now realize that there were questions I should have asked originally, but never even realized would ever become an issue.  I'm still daunted by the fact that I have to contact some of my interview sources again.

Then came the process of creating my own book cover.  Some people hire this out.  But either way, it takes time and sometimes money.  Then came the research it took to figure out the best way to present my novel.  At first, I was only going to publish it on Amazon Kindle.  But my wife and I figured my novel would be worthy of being published in printed form.

Next, I had to find creative ways to start getting the word out about my novel, ways that I hope have been very exciting to my friends, family members, and complete strangers whom I have told about my novel.

And then came one of the biggest bears to fight in the whole process:  countless, upon countless revisions.  Thankfully, my aunt is helping me with this task.  But the extra set of eyes for which I am truly thankful does create more work and additional revisions of the text.

Finally, I have not even figured out how much work is going to be involved in successfully uploading my novel to Kindle, since this is my first flight in being a novelist.  And I am not entirely sure what to expect from AuthorHouse Publishing, who will bring my novel into a tangible printed form.  And it took a major investment in order for them to commit to this.  I will be pleasantly surprised if my novel sellswell enough to give me back the investment alone, much less any profit off of it.

In short, if being a writer is glamorous, I have yet to see it.  All I have seen thus far is a daunting amount of work.  Though I am not complaining!  I really enjoy the work.  But I just thought it would be very interesting to share with you guys the overwhelming amount of planning and implementation involved in publishing a novel.  Hopefully, 2018 will be a bestseller, and I will finally be able to enjoy some glamor for a change.  But who the heck knows?