Okay, this writer’s block has lasted more than long enough. If taking a break was going to help, it would have by now. Time to, as my grandmother would have said, take the bull by the horns.
The first thing I’m going to do is read through the original version of MAGE STORM and try to remember what it was that excited me about that story in the first place.
While I do that, I’m going to also rethink a couple of things.
Mage Storm needs a rewrite. What it doesn’t need, perhaps, is me trying to shoehorn it into a mold that worked before. It doesn’t have to grow into a 100,000-word epic–unless it wants to, of course. Maybe that’s the realization I needed to make.
I also needed to confront something else that may have been–all right, probably was and is–affecting my motivation generally.
I never really expected to make a lot of money writing–very few writers do. I don’t do this to pay the bills. (Some months, that’s a very, very good thing.) That’s not why I write.
Still, my Dual Magics series did pretty well.
And, the thing about that is: I don’t know why. I didn’t do any marketing at the beginning, not even on social media. And, really, whatever marketing I’ve attempted has pretty much fizzled. But that series did well, anyway. Who know why?
And I tried to replicate that with the Become Series, only this time a very, very tiny bit better at promotion. And fell flat.
I completed the series in January and so far I haven’t even made back what I spent on covers–and I do my own covers–and marketing around the release of the final book. What makes it harder is that I think this series is my best writing so far. I don’t even know what readers think because I’m still waiting for the first review on either of the full-length books.
That’s disappointing, though I know that publishing, especially indie publishing, moves on and what worked a couple of years ago–even if I knew what that was–probably wouldn’t work now. Like I said, I didn’t go into this expecting to make a lot of money, but nobody likes to think they’re just talking to themselves.
But, the thing is, if that’s going to bother me now, when it didn’t before, because my first few books before the Dual Magics series didn’t do any better, then I’d better start figuring out what does work.
And, if I’m not ever going to be a marketing wizard–I can get better at it than I am, but let’s not expect miracles–then I should look around at some of my fellow indie authors and see what’s working for them in their writing. Fortunate for me the indie authors, on the whole, like to lift each other up, not tear each other down.
One thing I’ve notices, contrary to what some “experts” say, sometimes shorter books with quicker turn around do better than longer ones published farther apart.
Worth a try.
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Meredith Mansfield, Author 