Sharing the steps I am taking to get somewhere I desire to be – and accepting getting uncomfortable outside my comfort zone.
With the coming publication of The Void Incursion – Book One – Opening Gambit, I am working on stepping out of my comfort zone on several levels.
What does that mean? It means that I am taking actions and doing things that I have not done before.
Back in 2011, my friend Valerie Griswold-Ford offered me an opportunity. She was editing an anthology called Rum and Runestones – short stories about pirates and magic. Would I like to contribute a story?
Of course, I said yes! I took the time to create a short story. A Treacherous Stone was the result.
In my hand was a completed book in which I was published. I could finally call myself a published author.
Before this, I was working on the traditional route for publishing. I had completed Seeker, the first novel of The Source Chronicles, and gotten it edited professionally. For more than a decade I was sending queries to agents and publishers accepting submissions. When I got responses, they were rejections, of course.
Now that I had a published work under my belt, I expanded the effort more enthusiastically – and got the same result. Nothing.
With the publication or Rum and Runestones – and then Spells and Swashbucklers in 2012, getting published had gone from a pipedream to reality. How long should I continue to attempt the traditional route? Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
Departing the comfort zone
Partially as an experiment, and because it was non-fiction, I decided to self-publish for the first time.
I compiled the first year of Pathwalking (which, at this point, was just a year old), along with other articles the coincided with those posts. I used the tools of Createspace and published my first book.
This was exciting. I was no longer just writing for myself. There it was, available on Amazon. My first published book!
The next step out of my comfort zone came when I decided it was time to bring Seeker to the world. In the fall of 2014, I published Seeker, and saw it in print and for Kindle, available to all.
This was huge. This was the novel that I hoped would launch my fiction writing career.
It garnered some sales, and more than a dozen reviews…and then a sale here, a sale there, but few and far between.
I decided to publish Finder, the second book of the series. The sales were not on the same level as those of Seeker – and even now, since it’s release at the end of 2015, it has been rated once (granted, 4 of 5 stars) but never reviewed.
That didn’t discourage me, though. I have self-published 5 other works spanning different genres, including Steampunk, inspirational fiction, a humorous narrative, and self-improvement/inspiration.
Truly, I can call myself a published author. In that I have finished and published multiple works – I am a successful author.
Yet this is not my primary source of income, as I would desire for it to be. Every self-publication is an expansion of my library. But each represented only a slight variation on approach.
The conclusion that this has brought me to, of course, is that I need to step even further out of my comfort zone.
Leap and the net will appear
This is an old Zen saying that I strive to use and take to heart regularly. Sometimes this is easier to appreciate and utilize than other times.
With this new novel, I am taking a different approach.
First, I am doing a month of pre-sales. During this time, I am working on some new ways that I can increase my audience and take this all to a new level.
Second, I am in discussion with someone to help promote this book. It will involve spending money – which I am always uncomfortable doing – but I think in this instance the return on investment may be significant.
Like all the rest of what I have put out there, this is risky. I know that. But this is what I believe I am here to do in this life. Writing, both my fiction and non-fiction, is my greatest skill and my passion. I have a deep love affair with the written word, and I believe that this has a lot of potential.
But to move forward on this I need to put in some effort and do some things that I am not comfortable with. That involves a fairly major departure from my comfort zones.
Between spending the money I need to spend on this, not to mention working with this person and taking this somewhere I haven’t been before, I am uncomfortable.
But that’s how it works, isn’t it? To do anything new and different and move on from one place to the next requires discomfort.
Action is necessary
To move from one place to another you have to take action. If I stand still the world does move around me, and change will occur. But I will be entirely reactive to all that happens to me.
Or I can choose to act. I can decide that I truly wish to depart from the comfort zone and take the next steps to get where I desire to go.
What I have done in the past has only gotten me so far. To go further I need to challenge myself and do something different. I do not know what that is or how it looks – but I know it’s something I am capable of. And it requires stepping out of my comfort zone.
Nobody can do this for me. And the only way to do it is to take action. So that’s what needs to be done.
Deep breath. Release the fear and uncertainty. I can do this. The other side of my comfort zone is a mystery, but I am excited to see what I might find there.
Thank you for taking part in my ongoing journey. Thank you for joining me, and for inspiring me and my art.
This is the fifty-fourth article exploring the creative process. Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published works, which can be found here.
Feel free to explore the rest of the website, which I am working to evolve and change for the better…much like I am doing for myself. Also, visit Awareness for Everyone to check out my weekly podcasts.
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