I FEEL LIKE GIVING UP

I have wanted to be a writer since I was nine years old.
That’s a long time.
Thirty-two years to be exact.

I started writing my first novel when I was eleven. That one was never completed. But by the time I was eighteen (2000/2001), I had written two substantial novels. I started looking for publishers, and receiving rejection letters. And I know, looking back, that my writing at that age and stage of life wasn’t very good.

But I kept attempting to write more books.

By the time I was around twenty-nine, I had written a supernatural thriller trilogy (all three books were well over 100,000 words each). I believed in this book series. I believed it was a riveting read. It was very Pentecostal, full of angels and demons and I believed it had the potential to be a best seller like Frank Peretti’s “Piercing the Darkness.” I spent over $1000 paying a publisher to design covers, edit, and format the book, creating hardcopy paperbacks.

I then PAID to buy 200 copies of my own book. I sold maybe 150 copies and gave away about 50 copies for nothing. I probably spent more money buying the 200 books than I earned selling those physical copies, and definitely didn’t recoup on the money spent prior to publication. I threw the publisher another $800ish dollars (this was around 2012 or 2013 and I’m talking in $AUD but paid to a US publisher) for marketing, which made me zero returns and I have no evidence the publisher even attempted to market it at all.

Next, I turned the series into ebooks and uploaded them to amazon. That cost next to nothing once I bought a book that taught me how to format ebooks. I started out trying to sell them for probably about $5 each. Then $4. Then $3. Then $2. Then $0.99cents. And because I knew next to nothing about marketing and advertising, I sold next to no copies.

Years later, in 2021, I forked out another $1000+ on new book covers. I gave the books new titles and re-published them as ebooks (no hardcopies available yet) on amazon. Pursuit, Possession, and Predestination / Covenant-999 trilogy, if you’re interested.

I read books about marketing and advertising and I gave it a good go. Hundreds of dollars fell from my pockets into Jeff Bezo’s money-making machine to sell a handful of copies of the books. Hundreds turned into $1000. By the time I quit paying for advertising I had spent around $1600 USD. Another substantial financial loss.

Meanwhile, I have always been writing. I cannot tell you the number of books I have attempted—ballpark, probably around 50. Some of those are whole books: 50,000-100,000 words each. A lot of them require substantial editing or total overhauls (re-writes). I self-published a book called Grace for Sexual Shame in 2015/2016 that actually made me more money than I spent on it, because by that time I had learned how to self-published and a friend designed the cover for free. An article was published about me in an Australian magazine and that was my advertising for the book. But I pulled the plug on my own book because I was uncomfortable with the content. I felt too inexperienced or under-qualified for the topic at the time.

Now I have written another non-fiction book, a memoir, that I’m really proud of. I have done more research about marketing and advertising. I’m trying to get a handle on how to spend money to make money instead of just throwing money down the drain. I spent another $1000ish USD last year on a new website. (Not to mention that I actually have 2 websites I’m paying for and have been blogging for god-knows how many years.)

I paid an editor to edit my memoir which I cut down to just under 100,000 words (I really do have the “gift of the gab”). The editor recommended a particular publisher. I applied to two other publishers as well.

And just this week, I received two rejection emails. One because I don’t have a big enough platform, another because I was too honest (in my book) about not being able to be certain of my recollection of my own trauma experiences.

It’s depressing.
It’s discouraging.
I feel like giving up.
And yet I’m trapped.
I can’t give up.

Clearly, I have a passion for writing. I’ve been writing for 30 years. I have never stopped. I have been tempted to quit before, but even when I feel like quitting, I just go back to writing for myself instead of trying to earn money from it.

I have never earned money from writing—not in any substantial way. Definitely not more than I have spent. I have spent way too much money on my so-called “career.” I feel embarrassed calling myself a “writer” because it has COST me far more than I have ever earned.

I like to think that I’m failing forward.

But I regularly grapple with feelings of utter failure. I’m proud of my work. I enjoy doing this work more than any paid job I have ever had. But I feel like a financial failure and, by association, a vocational failure.