I Wrote a Book. Apparently, That Was the Easy Part
Writing has always come easily to me.
Words have been my refuge for as long as I can remember. They've been a place to escape, to process, to question, and occasionally to unleash whatever emotional chaos I've been carrying around.
Writing is how I make sense of the world.
Sometimes, it's how I avoid making sense of the world.
Either way, it's always been there.
What I hadn't anticipated was that writing an entire fucking novel might actually be the easiest part of becoming a published author.
Yes. You read that correctly.
Writing 70,000 words about murder, deception, and the complicated inner workings of the human mind was apparently the relaxing portion of this experience.
Who knew?
The Part Nobody Warned Me About
When I started writing An Unwoven Truth, I had a fairly romanticized understanding of what publishing would look like.
I imagined writing the book, editing the book, formatting the book, and eventually holding a beautiful physical copy in my hands.
Maybe I'd drink some celebratory espresso.
Maybe I'd cry.
Maybe I'd stare at my name on the cover for an unreasonable amount of time.
What I did not envision was becoming an amateur computer technician, graphic designer, marketing executive, accountant, and professional troubleshooter, all while trying to remember whether my children had eaten dinner.
But here we are.
And holy shit, has it been an education.
Technology, My Newest Adversary
First came the edits.
So many edits.
Edits to the edits.
Edits that created new edits.
The kind of edits that make you question whether the English language really needs quite so many punctuation marks.
Then came formatting.
Paragraph spacing. Page breaks. Margins. Fonts. Front matter. Back matter.
Things I had previously taken for granted when opening a book suddenly became enormous considerations.
Who knew that something as seemingly insignificant as a page break could become the bane of my existence?
Then there was Kindle Create.
Oh, Kindle Create.
You and I have developed a very complicated relationship.
At one point, my computer apparently decided that an extremely important manuscript file should simply cease to exist in any location where a reasonable human being might look for it.
Gone.
Hidden.
Possibly vacationing somewhere with all of my missing socks.
I scrambled.
I searched.
I cursed.
I considered whether throwing my computer across the room would provide any meaningful emotional relief.
Ultimately, I re-uploaded the latest version of my manuscript and manually added all of the front matter and back matter.
Again.
Because apparently once wasn't enough.
Eventually, everything looked beautiful.
Or so I thought.
Congratulations! Your Book Is Published. Please Fix It.
Then came release day.
My book was officially out in the world.
I was a published author.
There were celebrations, excitement, congratulations, and the extraordinary realization that people could now purchase something that had existed exclusively inside my imagination.
I had done it.
Except...
Not quite.
Because shortly after publication, I realized there were formatting issues that needed to be corrected.
Fine.
No problem.
I had become fairly proficient at this point.
Back into the software I went.
Another upload.
Another submission.
Another opportunity to stare at a progress bar and question every decision that had led me here.
Then my first physical copy arrived.
The moment.
The one I'd been imagining for months.
I opened the package, pulled out my book, and held it in my hands.
And...
Womp, womp.
The cover was slightly blurry.
Not catastrophically blurry, but just blurry enough that I knew.
And once you know something is wrong with your own work, you cannot unknow it.
Then I opened the book.
Apparently, certain characters that looked perfectly normal in the software had decided to transform themselves into tiny, empty squares when printed.
Little squares.
In my novel.
Where actual punctuation and characters were supposed to be.
How charming.
Nothing says professional literary debut quite like a mysterious geometric symbol appearing in the middle of a sentence.
So, back to work.
I searched for the offending characters.
I replaced them.
I reloaded the manuscript.
I submitted the changes.
Again.
By this point, I was beginning to wonder whether publishing a novel was actually some sort of elaborate psychological experiment designed to determine how many minor inconveniences a human being could endure before losing her fucking mind.
And then my editor sent another list.
More things that needed attention.
Now, I want to be clear about something.
She was right.
Every item she identified deserved to be addressed.
I knew that.
I appreciated that.
I also really, really, REALLY didn't want to do any of it.
I wanted to be finished.
I wanted to sit on my couch, drink coffee, and enjoy the fact that I had written a book.
I wanted to stop opening files.
I wanted to stop seeing the words upload successful only to discover that success was, apparently, a matter of interpretation.
I wanted to be done.
The Kind of Friend You Don't Deserve but Somehow Get Anyway
This is where my editor, who also happens to be one of my dearest friends, demonstrated precisely why she is such an extraordinary human being.
She knew I was done.
Not with writing.
Not with being an author.
Just mentally, emotionally, spiritually done with troubleshooting this particular manuscript.
So she took over.
She logged in.
She made the edits.
She uploaded everything.
And then she gave me a very specific assignment:
"Your assignment is to get the kids to bed."
That was it.
No lecture.
No reminder that this was my responsibility.
No suggestion that I should simply push through.
She recognized that what I needed most in that moment wasn't another solution explained to me.
It was someone willing to take something off my plate.
And she did.
A great editor.
An even better friend.
I think there's something profoundly beautiful about people who understand when you're running out of steam and quietly step in to help carry the weight.
Not because they have to.
Because they love you.
That kind of support is worth more than I could ever adequately express.
And yes, the kids got to bed.
The Many, Many Hats of an Independent Author
Something I've learned throughout this experience is that being an independent author requires an almost comical number of unrelated skills.
You begin as a writer.
A storyteller.
Someone who dreams up characters, creates worlds, develops relationships, and spends entirely too much time thinking about how fictional people might commit very real crimes.
That part makes sense to me.
I love that part.
But then the book is finished, and suddenly you're expected to become an entire publishing company.
You're the creative department.
You develop the story, build the characters, revise the plot, and agonize over whether the dialogue sounds natural.
You spend hours staring at a paragraph because something about it feels wrong, even though you can't quite articulate why.
You rewrite it seventeen times.
Then you change it back to the original.
Naturally.
You're the production department.
You learn about trim sizes, margins, bleed, fonts, file compatibility, pagination, and the deeply irritating ways that digital files can behave differently when printed.
You discover that a manuscript looking perfect on your computer does not necessarily mean it will look perfect in someone's hands.
You become intimately familiar with software you never wanted to understand in the first place.
You're the marketing department.
Oh, this one.
This one has been especially entertaining.
Because I love writing.
I love talking about writing.
I love talking about books.
What I do not particularly love is trying to convince strangers to purchase something I've created.
It's an entirely different kind of vulnerability.
Suddenly, you're making Instagram posts, creating graphics, writing captions, learning about advertising, reaching out to reviewers, maintaining a website, and attempting to understand why one post reaches hundreds of people while another appears to have been delivered exclusively to your husband and a suspicious-looking bot.
You're supposed to be visible.
Engaging.
Consistent.
Interesting.
And somehow not obnoxious.
Which, frankly, feels like a very delicate fucking balance.
You're the accounting department.
You track expenses.
Software subscriptions.
Website costs.
Advertising budgets.
Book sales.
Royalties.
Reports.
And all of the little financial details that accumulate while you're busy convincing yourself you're simply pursuing a creative passion.
Nothing quite interrupts a beautiful artistic moment like realizing you've subscribed to three different programs that essentially do the same thing.
You're also customer service, quality control, and technical support.
Except the customer is often you.
And you're not particularly satisfied.
And the technical support department is just you Googling increasingly specific questions while muttering obscenities at your laptop.
At some point, you realize you've spent an entire afternoon fixing something that has absolutely nothing to do with storytelling.
And that's when it hits you.
Being an author is not the same thing as being a writer.
The Difference Between Writing and Publishing
I think this has been my biggest revelation.
Writing is personal.
It's intimate.
It's something I do because I need to.
Because there are stories in my head that demand somewhere to go.
Because words help me understand emotions, people, relationships, and the often bizarre circumstances of being human.
Publishing is different.
Publishing takes something deeply personal and turns it into something public.
Something tangible.
Something people can purchase, examine, criticize, recommend, or put down halfway through.
It requires an entirely different kind of courage.
When I'm writing, I can get lost in the story.
When I'm publishing, I have to pay attention to everything surrounding it.
The technical details.
The business decisions.
The expectations.
The possibility that despite my best efforts, something will still go wrong.
And here's the uncomfortable truth:
Something probably will.
There will be another typo.
Another formatting issue.
Another piece of technology that decides to become possessed.
Another moment when I think I've figured everything out, only to discover an entirely new thing I didn't know I needed to learn.
And I suppose that's part of it.
Not the glamorous part.
Not the part you see in photographs of smiling authors holding their books.
But the very real, very frustrating, sometimes hilarious work of bringing a story into the world.
Would I Do It Again?
Absolutely.
Which is probably the most ridiculous part of this entire experience.
After all the frustration, the late nights, the endless corrections, and the occasional desire to launch my computer into the nearest body of water, I would do it again.
Because somewhere underneath all of the technical nonsense is the thing that started this journey.
I love writing.
I love the way a story develops.
I love watching characters become complicated and imperfect and occasionally do things that surprise even me.
I love finding the right words for something I couldn't previously explain.
And now, I get to experience something I never could when those stories existed only on my computer.
Other people are reading them.
People are spending their evenings with characters I created.
They're forming opinions.
They're asking questions.
They're enjoying something I made.
And that is still so fucking surreal to me.
But I also have a new appreciation for every independent author whose book I've ever held.
Because now I understand a little more about what it took to get there.
Not just the imagination.
Not just the writing.
But the persistence, the patience, the willingness to learn, and the ability to keep going when the whole process feels unnecessarily complicated.
I also understand that although independent publishing often means doing much of the work yourself, it doesn't mean you have to do everything alone.
Sometimes success looks like finishing a manuscript.
Sometimes it looks like holding your first printed book.
And sometimes it looks like a wonderful friend taking over your computer and telling you to go put your children to bed.
All three count.
What I've Learned So Far
I've learned that creativity and technical proficiency are two entirely different things.
I've learned that perfection is a moving target, and sometimes it's a target that decides to sprint in the opposite direction.
I've learned that asking for help is not a failure.
I've learned that a good editor is invaluable, but a good friend who happens to be your editor is something else entirely.
I've learned that publishing requires resilience in ways I never anticipated.
And perhaps most importantly, I've learned that I can do difficult things even when those things aren't the ones I originally signed up for.
I set out to write a novel.
I ended up learning how to run a tiny, chaotic publishing operation.
I'm still learning.
Still making mistakes.
Still figuring out which hat I'm supposed to be wearing on any given day.
But I'm also a published author.
And despite everything, I am extraordinarily proud of that.
So, to the aspiring authors out there: write your stories. Chase the ideas that won't leave you alone. Finish the manuscript.
Just know that when you finally type The End, you may discover you've actually reached the beginning of an entirely different adventure.
One that involves considerably more formatting than anyone should reasonably have to endure.
And to the independent authors who have already navigated this madness:
What was the one thing about publishing that nobody warned you about?
Please tell me I'm not the only one who's considered filing a formal complaint against a PDF.
Because at this point, I have some fucking notes.