Responding to the Growing Challenges of Author Life

There’s no doubt that it’s becoming harder to be an indie author these days. We’ve known for a very long time that the Kindle gold rush is long gone, but just in the last few months writers have faced some new challenges. How are we as Christian writers to respond to growing challenges?

The most talked about of these recent challenges is perhaps Draft2Digital’s introduction of a $20 joining fee, and a $12 annual maintenance fee. This came as a big shock to a lot of people - certainly to me.

These fees are in place to try to protect readers from scammers who abuse platforms like D2D to upload large quantities of fake books created with AI that were never intended to be read. The annual fee is only charged to those who make less than $100 (after D2D take their bit) on the platform.

After receiving this news, I checked what my previous year’s takings on D2D were. My heart sank. I already knew it was well below the $100 threshold, but it was also well below the $12 fee. I would now be paying more to D2D than they would be paying me. I would be making a loss just by being on the platform. In a situation like this, one may legitimately ask, what’s the point of even being there at this point?

I was struck with feelings of unfairness. This policy puts authors from developing countries at a greater disadvantage, and even here in Australia, the exchange rate means we’ll end up paying a lot more than $12. But most of all, it felt like I was being kicked while I was down - fined for my failure.

This choice has resulted in a lot of emotion and discussion. Many people have immediately withdrawn their books from the platform.

For me, this was an eye-opening moment. I was forced to face the truth of my lack of success. I’ve always known that I wasn’t making many sales, but I tried not to compare myself to others. Afterall, we’re all on our own journey, proceeding at our own pace. But as I stared at a flat line of zeroes on my KDP dashboard, and considered I was now paying more than I was making, I felt the message was clear. You’re not a real author. You’re not good enough. You are not valued.

My purpose here, is not to throw hate at Draft2Digital. They are doing what they believe is best for all concerned. My purpose is to examine how we react to these kinds of difficulties.

So how did I respond to all of this? I allowed myself a day to feel sad. To live in my emotions as I wrestled with these feelings of inadequacy and failure. But after that, I knew I would have to get back to work. I chose to view this setback as a challenge - a call to arms - to try to raise my sales, to at least see if I could reach that $12 mark to break even. And I remembered that my value is not in how much money I’m making, or how many people are reading my books, it’s who I am in Christ. I’m proud of my stories. I believe in my stories, and I know there are people out there who have enjoyed them.

This experience was also a good reminder to involve God, not only in my writing, but also in my marketing. For us, writing is more than just a business, it’s also a calling. We have words of encouragement and life to share with the world. If God wants those words to be read, doesn’t he have the power to help make that happen in his time?

Draft2Digital’s new policy isn’t the first challenge we’ve faced, and it won’t be the last. I predict things will only get harder as time goes on. Despite this, we are still living in a great time. We still have the ability to publish our words, relatively free of gatekeepers. We still have more opportunity than most writers throughout human history.

It can feel wrong to ask God to bless our marketing efforts, to help our books find success. It feels selfish somehow. But God has given us gifts. He has put words in our hearts that I believe he wants us to share.

Today is the launch day for my latest book - the fourth installment in my Jewel of The Stars series. I have worked hard over the last 30 days to promote it, and I have seen some results. Not earth-shattering results, but I’m no longer seeing a flatline of zeroes. That little glimmer is enough to keep me going, because it sparks something in me that tells me it will be worthwhile some day. It’s not stubbornness, it’s not self-delusion. It’s faith. The story is not over yet. God still needs to write the ending. Until then, I keep working, keep striving, not in my strength, but in his.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 

Philippians 3:13-14

Adam David Collings is a science fiction and fantasy author from Tasmania, Australia. He draws inspiration for his stories from his over-active imagination, his life experiences and his faith. Adam is the host of the Nerd heaven Podcast where he discusses works of sci-fi and fantasy on the big and little screen. You can find him at AdamDavidCollings.com

Resistance is Futile!

This is my Star Trek avatar created on Trekkietar

When I was about fourteen, I discovered Star Trek. I loved it. We only had the original series back then—on rerun, by the way. I’m not that old. I remember going with friends to mini conventions which basically involved dressing up (you didn’t call it cosplay back then) and binge-watching series episodes on the big screen. I was in true geek heaven. When other kids had posters of KISS, ABBA, or The Bay City Rollers (yes, really) on their wall, I had pictures of Kirk, Spock and the starship Enterprise.  

Yep. Geek. How amazing is it that William Shatner recently travelled to space at 90-years-old? 

There have been several iterations of the Star Trek universe since then and while I’ll always love Shatner, Nimoy and DeForest Kelley, in the original series, my favourite Star Trek series is The Next Generation (TNG). Set a hundred years after the original series, Sir Patrick Stewart, as Jean-Luc Picard, gave a new dignity, and eloquence, to the role of Starfleet Captain. 

The TNG crew also featured in my all-time favourite Trek movie, Star Trek: First Contact. This movie was a lot of fun and it showcased one of the most sinister villains of the Star Trek Universe, The Borg. The Borg are black-leather-clad cyborgs. Their starship is a huge cube with weaponry that can overpower almost all other ships. They operate as a hive mind—The Collective—and are controlled by the Borg Queen. Their goal is perfection, and they operate by assimilating other races into their own by injecting nano-bots into their victims. 

They are a powerful enemy of all civilisations and their demoralising warning to all is: Resistance is futile. The Borg are too strong. Give up now.

By IMPAwards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54488873

I won’t spoil First Contact for you (but if you haven’t seen it, where have you been?) but those words, resistance is futile, are used to great effect in the climax of the film.

By now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with writing. 

Well, this week I’ve had the Borg catch-cry in my head as I’ve pondered a different, but very futile kind of resistance: resistance to writing.

I suffer from this resistance a lot—even though I love writing. Do you? I know I’m not alone.

To create a world and immerse yourself in the lives of your characters is a thing of joy. You get to know these make-believe people, torture them in some diabolically cathartic way, then cheer them on as they overcome the obstacles you throw before them. What’s not to like? Writing can be so much fun, so why do we resist sitting down and filling empty pages with our words. 

Resistance is weird. Why will we do almost anything other than write our first draft of a fiction novel? I’ll work on my website, write a blog post, take the dog for a walk. Anything. I have a friend who says her cupboards are never cleaner than when she’s drafting a novel.

I’m convinced resistance is different from writer’s block. While these two problems can be related, in my experience writer’s block is usually caused by a problem within our stories. If our plot isn’t working or if the goals, motivations and conflicts of our characters aren’t sound, we can easily stop writing and feel blocked. Resistance, on the other hand, is often experienced even before we sit down to type.

The resistance I’m talking about is also different from the inability to write that comes from serious life situations. I couldn’t write for six months after my brother died. That wasn’t resistance, it was grief.

Resistance to writing is the psychological force that pushes back against us when we try to create. 

In the realm of physics, resistance reduces to the ability of a wire to conduct electricity. The larger the resistance, the less electricity passes. In the same way, resistance to writing holds back the creative flow. 

Inertia is another physics term that says a mass will stay still or keep moving in a uniform way unless it’s acted upon by an opposing force. If you have a large SUV broken down in front of your driveway, it will stay there unless you are strong enough to push it out of the way. The good news is that once you get the SUV moving, inertia helps to keep it moving. The harder you push, the more the vehicle gathers momentum. But if you stop pushing, it will stop moving because of gravity and friction. Now if you are trying to push it uphill and you stop pushing...

Image by Schäferle from Pixabay 

Writing resistance is like that inertia. If we can overcome it, we gain momentum that keeps us moving forward, but if we don’t maintain our force and intention, our stories grind to a halt. 

Resistance to writing can lead to futility. It can stop us in our tracks, take us captive and rob us of the satisfaction of creating a body of work we are proud of. It can cripple our self-esteem, assimilate us into the mundane and crucify our joy.

But fighting resistance is not futile. It can be beaten even if, like me, you have a bad case of this malady.

Here are some things that can help:

• Start. It sounds simple but the best way to overcome resistance is to begin. Determine that you will write some part of your novel, however miniscule, each day.

• Make your goal doable. If resistance is a strong force in your writing life, then start with a tiny goal. Forget NaNoWriMo with its 50K words in a month. Begin with 300 words a day. Or say you will spend half an hour a day writing new story. 

• Give yourself permission for those 300 words to be the worst writing ever. Because words, even badly composed words, can be edited and built upon.

• Experiment. Try a different approach. I recently discovered the dictation function in the Office 365 version of Word. I am woeful at dictation, but when I use it to get a distracted rabble of words down onto the page, I don’t have a blank page anymore. And the fear goes away.

• Use a pen name. Sarah Painter in her book, Stop Worrying, Start Writing, suggests if fear of failure is holding you back, tell yourself you are going to publish your book under a secret pen name. Whether you use that name or your real name at the time of publication, doesn’t matter. What matters is that you trick your brain into thinking no one important to you need know these words are yours.
• Believe in God? Then pray. After all, one of his titles is Creator!

When we start, even with tiny goals, and give ourselves permission to write badly, a strange thing happens. The forces of inertia are overcome, and we begin to move forward. Our 300 words build momentum and become 500 words or 1000, until the story takes a life of its own.

I began this post by talking about Star Trek and the Borg. In this case the Borg were the opposing force speaking words designed to demoralise their victims. Resistance is futile. But resisting the Borg (sorry, spoiler after all 😆) wasn’t futile. 

Nor is resisting resistance. With writing, the power of resistance is itself futile. It can be beaten. 

And no alien cyborg is gonna stop us!

Have you wrestled with resistance? What tactics do you use to beat it? Let me know in the comments below.

Susan J Bruce, aka Sue Jeffrey, spent her childhood reading, drawing, and collecting stray animals. Now she’s grown up, she does the same kinds of things. Susan worked for many years as a veterinarian, and now writes stories filled with mystery, suspense, heart and hope. Susan also loves to paint animals. Susan won the ‘Short’ section of the inaugural Stories of Life writing competition and won the 'Unpublished Manuscript' section of the 2018 Caleb prize. Susan is the editor of 'If They Could Talk: Bible Stories Told By the Animals' (Morning Star Publishing) and her stories and poems have appeared in multiple anthologies. Click here to check out Susan’s writing and artwork on her website.