Failure Heavy Eating

I eat failure for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desert, with snack sized portions between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I eat failure with a smile on my face, with everlasting gratitude. I eat failure with the fevered hunger of Oliver Twist in the workhouse, pleading, "Please Sir, I want some more." I eat failure covered by the pungent sauce of rejection, with a stolid glass of determination to wash it down.

Why do I devour failure so? I do it because it's good-no-great for me as an independent author in today's glutted field of independent authors. The more I fail (and by failure I mean slow book sales, people not showing up at outdoor festivals because of sheets of rain falling from the sky-seemingly until the moment I pack up and leave, so on and so forth), the humbler I remain. So long as I remain humble, I remain focused on producing the best work I can. So long as I remain humble, I remain determined and creative in marketing my work.

To any author or would be author reading this blog entry, know that failure is the norm in the literary world, failure is a ladder to climb toward success. Stephen King- one of the richest and most famous authors of all time- failed so much before he succeeded that he dedicated bulletin board space to tacking up his rejection letters. On his September 1, 2011 blog entry (http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/), master literary blogger and hugely successful self-published author, J.A. Konrath wrote that it took twenty years and more than two million written words for him to achieve his current level of success. I've only been in the writing/publishing world for two years. I've not yet begun to fail! Unless you've been in the business for anywhere near the amount of time Mr. Konrath has, neither have you.

So my advice to aspiring/emerging authors is: Write as well as you possibly can and learn to embrace failure like a loved one returning home from a long abscence. No, learn to eat failure for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desert, with snack sized portions between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Learn to learn from failure. Learning from failure can only push you toward success. Trust me (though I've only had small tastes of it so far), success is delicious.

A Good Book is a Good Book is a Good Freaking Book!

As anyone who knows anything about the publishing industry in this digital age knows (don't hold your breath for it to end if you hate it - it will never end!) , having an internet presence is very important to today's authors. One of the things an author can do to maintain/strengthen their internet presence is partcipate in literary/author dicussion forums ( such as those found at http://www.kindleboards.com/). A few days ago, I was practicing what I preached in the previous sentence when I read a post that caused me to be "Fired up and ready to go" (candidate Barack Obama -2008). A participant who shall remain unidentified asked if any of their fellow self-published owners felt self-conscious about identifying themselves as self-published authors (try saying that three times fast).

My response to that question was swift and appropriate. I told the participant who shall remain unnamed that there is no need for self-published authors to identify themselves as self-published authors because a good author is a good author is a good freaking author! Likewise, a good book is a good book is a good freaking book! PWSRU seemed to suffer from the steaming toro dung assertion that legacy publishers (I learned the term legacy from reading J.A. Konrath's outstanding blog- http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/) have been trying to force feed readers and authors since the advent of print on demand technology. That assertion is that self-published work is inherently inferior to traditionally published work. As I expressed to PWSRU on the forum- I laugh at such blatant falsehood! Sure, reading self-published work can be a crapshoot, but no more of a crapshoot than reading traditionally published work. I mean, come on - there are a whole buttload of traditionally published books out there that have been "written" by reality t.v. stars. Some of the aforementioned group hardly seem literate- yet they're writing books?

The most significant difference between a self-published author and a traditionally published author is the method in which their books are produced, advertised, and distributed. Concerning qualtiy, there is nothing to stop serious self-published authors from having thier books professionally designed and edited. Therefore, to identify onesself as a self-published author is a useless and senseless action. Authors need only to identify themselves as authors. Whether or not there are any good is a matter of individual reader opinion. By the way, Charles Dickens self-published A Christmas Carol. Those of you who think self-published work is inherently inferior should let that marinate in your mind.