Douglas Robbins

Author

Traditional or Self Publishing?

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After finishing my novel, The Reluctant Human, which I bared for many long years like a child that I needed to give birth to: I expected it to go straight to #1 (or a best sellers list at least). Oh wait, I needed to find a publisher first. Oh wait, I needed an agent. Oh wait, damn it, before that I needed “trusted” writer friends to read it.

After a few tweaks and changes and character arc alterations I called it done once again. I read some good advice in Stephen King’s great book On Writing. ‘If everyone has the same problem, change it. If everyone has a different concern, leave it alone.’ I applied that principle.

Anyway, I needed an agent. I wasn’t going to be some self-published guy. That was silly talk. I was a “real” writer. So I picked up the writer’s bibles for agents and publishing houses: Jeff Herman’s Guide To Agents and Writers Marketplace. I got myself a chicken parm sub from the local pizza joint and started reading about query letters.

Hmm, many agents weren’t interested in new writers and weren’t taking on new clients, but a few were. Hmm, most of those were Romance or YA agents yet I didn’t see anybody specifically listing “slice of life book regarding today’s modern struggle…” Anyway, I continued my search.

Hell, it was gonna be a long shot to find an agent…

My book didn’t really fit into any sort of “genre” literature, which made it even harder to find an agent. It was kind of a niche book: Half Henry Miller/Half Charles Bukowski with a sprinkle of Herman Hesse.

I decided on a few agents anyway, crafted a query letter and attempted to pitch my book. Almost every time however I had a problem with the email. It was sent too fast or formatting somehow got thrown off or it was deleted due to a “wandering mouse”. I sent off about a dozen. Then waited. Then waited some more. Got nothing. Then more of nothing.

At this time a friend mentioned a buddy of his who had sold a number of books on Amazon via KDP, which is their e-book sub-company. I spoke to his friend and gleaned whatever info I could.

He said to put it on KDP then keep looking for an agent. There is no commitment. I would keep 70% of royalties for e-books and owned the copyright. It was obvious what I should do and it took an instant. Well almost an instant. He said he made about $1500 the first month on KDP but less since then. I was in.

So I waited for agents but got rolling with KDP.

As writers, we bust our asses to write, quite often for years. Then traditionally we are supposed to send off query and follow up emails then wait for the crickets. In doing so, we give up all of our power to someone else. I received a few responses back “it will take several months to get back to you” is one of their pat responses. Or “Not for us”. Fine.

Agents were the gatekeepers. Not anymore. Really, what an agent does is solicit a publisher to get a piece published. Pretty simple. They take what they think they can sell to their often very select clients who only publish very specific things. That can take months or years or never. Now we wait longer? UGGH! What they think may be good or bad or sellable may have nothing to do with quality. Gone With The Wind was rejected over 40 times! Henry Miller was rejected for years. JK Rowling was rejected over a hundred times! Hmm, agents how many billions did you lose on those great decisions? Agents are readers just like you and me.

Everything that I have read about publishers (the big houses, not prisons) is they want a writer to blog, to have a considerable author platform on Facebook, Twitter, and maintain a website. So why do I need them you ask? Well they may offer a small advance and they will have editing and graphic services. Oh and they typically own the book.

One day I may seek them out again, but not for now…

I formatted the book and after bugging friends and family for sales to get it going, which I am grateful for, I finally started selling a few each day. Then I got on a small list that increased sales to 8-10 a day. No record breaker, but movement. Getting it out there. Reaching people.

A couple nuggets I have learned about self or indie publishing:

Pro: You get to control the content and cover of your book, etc.

Con: You get to control the content and cover of your book, etc.

Frankly, building a marketing campaign and author platform is exhausting, but it’s mine.

A close friend recently reminded me about the small stuff and building one’s reach with small literary journals who print short fiction. He reminded me that they have a reader base built in. Novel idea. Or I should say short story idea. So I have added that to my approach and will be sending out a few short pieces to them.

Officially, I am a self-published author braving the elements. However, just like anything else, if people don’t know something exists, it doesn’t. It’s the same idea as the tree falling in the woods with no one there to hear it. It is not a sprint to success but a marathon. It is about being consistent, working hard, and reaching readers one by one. So drink lots of water.

The Determined Artist

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When I finished writing The Reluctant Human I was relieved, elated, and exhausted. Writing a novel is hard work. It took me almost five years of blood, sweat, trial and error, cursing, lots of beer and wine, rewrites, edits, drafts, and a lot of time alone. In volume alone I probably wrote three novels while trying to “figure” out Human. Two of those novels were lines or scenes or ideas that didn’t work: story lines, characters and tones that needed to be cut and thrown on the cutting room floor, figuratively of course. They were really just moved to sit in a file I created for deleted stuff, but it sounds better and more dramatic to say, thrown on the cutting room floor. Hopefully I could find a use for them elsewhere or reinsert if necessary, because parts of me, of my hard work, I was not yet ready to give up on.

But where was the voice in the piece? What was it really about? What was I trying to say Damn It?! Did I want to shock or inspire, depress or anger? Did I want to alienate or upset or write in the broadest way for the most people to like it? My thoughts argued with themselves, you can’t please everyone.

There is a lot to consider when writing a novel. So I decided I would write the book I wanted to read. I would write the book I was looking for in the world. The premise was fairly simple: What happens when we walk away from who we are to become workers only and lose that vibrant calling within? Simple enough but how do I execute it? I worked and worked and worked some more to find the character arch, story and consistency.

Is the book perfect? No. Does it answer some of those answers I hoped to answer? Maybe. Has it inspired some readers and angered others? Yes.

I remember seeing an interview with Alec Baldwin after he won some acting award. The interviewer was gushing over his performance. He looked at her, cut her off, and said, “It’s all failure.” He went on to say nothing is ever as good as we hope it will be the way it is in our minds. But as writers, actors, artists, or architects, we try to get as close to the source and vision as we can. We keep working to hone the craft. As writers, our pens or keyboards are the conduits to express our minds, hearts and souls. It is our purpose for writing at all.

We must do our best at getting it right and yet we’ll probably be very wrong before we get it right or even close to right. Writing is a skill like brain surgery.

Writing is sculpting. Thoughts and ideas for a story start out like a glob of clay, indistinct, yet slowly through time we chisel and chisel and it takes shape, hopefully forming a story similar to what we imagined it to be. Learning the rules and conventions help such as painting within the lines. Then after refinement and hair pulling, I have very little hair left, we can hopefully express ourselves. For me that is the purpose of my life.

It is instinct and necessity why a flower must bloom or a bird must fly. It is their nature.  It is our nature to fulfill what yearns to be said and done. In turn we add to the world and help move it forward. That is our song, blossom, and fragrance.

My Therapy

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Sometimes I’m all wrong. Sometimes this world and I just don’t get along.

I won’t lie, the struggle to climb this mountain I’m on is long, too long, and I have often cursed the path. Many times I have cursed myself for being on it and believing in the climb and uncertain peak. Often the carrot dangling in front of me appears to be unattainable on the stick as it moves forward with my pace.

Being on this writer’s path has been a painful and difficult one. Looking around and seeing others on their journeys and in their lives, I know that I have to keep going, because there is only one way to find what I’m looking for. Hopefully, I won’t go mad or homeless in the meantime.

In these moments of despair I shut the computer off and walk out of the house to find comfort at the beach or in the woods. Many find comfort in church and religion. Yet for me there are no demands at the beach or in the woods. There is no dogma to embrace or uphold, and no judgments to endure or bills to pay. I can disconnect and recharge and believe again.

There is therapy found in nature. It is free therapy. It is soothing like from a mother that I have never found in man-made inventions. It caresses my weary head and heart. It sings to me.

At the beach my worries fade with each wave rolling into the shore. My concerns float off on warm winds. While up on a mountain they tumble down the hillside away from me, leaving me simpler, clearer, and ready to start the ascent again.

 

The Struggle

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Writing is tough. Life is tougher. When we choose a path outside of the norm there are pitfalls. When we choose a life of safety and conformity there are also pitfalls.

As a writer, artist or ballplayer we always wonder if we are ever going to make it. When? To what extent? How much will I have to sacrifice and endure? How much will I make? Are there any guarantees?

If we stay within a job that someone else provides then we may have the safety we desire and possibly money, but we may not have fulfillment. It may not be in-line with our higher selves, or how we see our futures. And most likely we have some jack-hole boss pulling our strings and giving us fits.

Safety does not help us find the answers we seek. It only provides safety. That is its design. Yet with safety we most likely won’t be on food stamps, but with a book that hasn’t sold and no job, we might.

Either way we give up something and find something in exchange. It has always bothered me being at jobs that were simply a means to an end. They had no real value to me, though there can be something to learn, if not about the product, then at least about myself.

I have often envisioned looking back from old age seeing a successful writer with many worldly experiences under my belt, satisfied and ready to “move on”.

However of late I have been concerned that the future is only a lie that hooks us with hope- that everything is going to be great, so we don’t drink ourselves to death or put a bullet in our heads.

There have been bad days that I have needed to lay on my bed and not answer the ringing phone, because I didn’t have the strength to talk to anyone. Those days the world and its demands could piss off.

People often say to go for your dreams, but they don’t mention how much suffering and absurdity, struggle and hardship we must endure along the way pushing us to the breaking point, testing our meddle.

On the way, you may be on welfare or borrowing from friends or family and feeling pathetic because it doesn’t just happen when you “go for it.” In fact, the skies don’t open and the doves are not released (though they should be) and balloons do not float into the sky upon the laughter of children.

Believe it or not, the decision to leave a shitty job is the easy part, even though it seems the hardest. And it is…at the time. But the process of learning and crafting, of finding one’s voice, and editing, re-writing and having others read it: then find an agent or publisher or learn about self-publishing or whatever it takes to sell the damn book is the next part of the journey.

Another treat is dealing with criticism and judgment along the way. Not just the judgment of our writing, but the judgment of our lives!!! In ways, by taking this “risky” move we are asking people, friends and family, pleading with them even, to judge us, because we are outside the norm. People often like underdogs but not necessarily what goes against the grain of their chosen paths, or outside of their comfort zones.

I left my corporate job in 2009 at the height of the economic crash and a friend mocked me in front of his wife, saying, “It’s the worst economy in 80 years and Doug is leaving his job!” My buddy and his wife had a good laugh over my “in”stability.

So “going for it” often sucks, but it also provides the satisfaction of achievement. It does have some sort of freedom and choice and this “ship is either making it to the mainland or will wreck upon the rocks,” mentality. In some ways we are the captains of destiny. That and luck of course.

The confusion of not knowing how long or how hard is never fun. It will never be fun. Being uncertain if you will go bankrupt or make rent or can go out to eat isn’t fun, but having a well-crafted chapter from your novel is something you can take wherever you go, even if you find yourself “involuntarily” camping “for a while”. Hanging out with friends can also suck when they have money, and you umm, don’t.

The starving writer is bullshit. It is a romantic notion. It’s hard to write or do much of anything when searching for food and shelter. Starving is never good. That is not why we started this journey.

But what a triumphant moment when your book does come out!!! It is something that can not be taken away. It is yours forever. It is something that ultimately came from nowhere but the thoughts in your head. Agented, published or self-published, won’t change that fact.

Another friend was recently bitching at me that I haven’t written enough about struggle. Imagine that? He had stopped writing and moving forward. After not getting published within a few months of finishing his novel, he was finished too. The journey is long and it has never been a straight line. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Not in writing, because there are no straight lines. The destination we seek is short and really only a small, but BIG, part of the journey.

My friend stopped writing so he could play it safe to be a doorman with benefits. Fine. It’s all choice. We are always the captains. How much can you or I take? We will be put to the test.

On many levels he was right. We do struggle…a lot. Yet we want to show our shiny side to the world, that we are in a great place, and that all is rosy. We want to show them a persona, a creation, so that they won’t know how we have struggled or that we are still.

We get caught up in the lofty goals but the truth is we get our asses and stomachs kicked along the way and our bank accounts drained. Yet quitting the journey on rough seas is no man’s land. There are pirates out there and sharks. It’s like a person without a country floating on a life raft away from choice and decision like a leaf on the sea.

Once the door opens and that light of focus goes on, there is no home but forward into the unknown.

I am not quite on the shore of success and stability, yet, but I would like to tell you that I am. I would love to have “made it”. Well, then what? We keep going on the journey. Perhaps there is some safety in that.

 

 

Why I Wrote Dawn

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Dawn is an earlier work that will be re-released in 2016. I really didn’t know enough about writing when I began and just like building a house it has its own quirks and personality.

Dawn was written as homage to my mother who had passed away a couple of years earlier. It was my way of saying thanks and also to apologize for being such a dumb kid not knowing she was in so much pain. Though a little late this was my only way to show her that I cared.

Dawn was also a way for me to pay respect to strong women and to shine a light on them. For women are often objectified and treated as second-class citizens in this country. I wanted to show how they are often the driving force behind all of our sanity and happiness.

Thus, Dawn was written.

I Have A Pebble In My Shoe

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Excerpts from the upcoming work by Douglas Robbins entitled I Have A Pebble In My Shoe…

I never wanted any of it. I never wanted a piece of the pie or slice of the dream, a 401k in my future, or the equation of what I’m supposed to be and want: all lined out in front of me on a nice crisp piece of paper. The truth is I never wanted to be a cop, lawyer, ceo, con man, insurance man, yes man, apathetic and pliable man, to be successful or to wait in line for it after the privileged ones got theirs first, stacked in their favor. But I did want to be a good man.

I never wanted corruption, nor religion, nor limitations and lies, nor the doubts or the compromise of my nature to suit the needs of the money machine and bureaucrats. I never wanted any of it except for the freedoms that allow the cheetah to run and hawk to soar. We are driven in the same manner, yet with different hungers and abilities.

What becomes of us when that driving force is given away and hidden? When the bristling intensity and abilities we are born with get replaced with homogenized desires. When the innate is asked to be ignored? How does it affect and eat at us? The voice within never stops yet the mind can thwart and subdue the spirit with doubt and fear. These are branches of the tree that tortured me for many years, until I learned about the root….

 

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