I must be dreaming

I always knew that writing a book was not going to be an easy thing, but I decided to tackle the challenge anyways. Being a published author has always, and I mean always, been a dream of mine. I had a poem published when I was 13, but it was in a book of poems written by kids 4-14 so that doesn't count for me since they probably accepted anything that was sent in. I wanted to be able to write something that meant a lot to me, get it published, and have it sold on the shelves of Barnes and Nobles. No matter what I was going to make that happen. I want to get my story out there. I have been through a lot and I want to share that. I want my book to help other people.

My first step was to write a blog and see how people accepted my writing. I have been writing on this blog for over a year now and I am not seeing the results I was hoping to see. I only have 3 followers, barely 3,000 page views, and no one comments on anything I write to give me some feedback. After a while I start to see other moms with their blogs and getting mass swarms of people reading them and sharing the blogs. Then to add salt to my wounds people are nominating blogs for these "who's is better" type of blog contests and my blog never gets mentioned. So I decided to start looking at the other blogs to see what I was doing differently. What did I notice? I am not as funny as the other blogs. I don't have cute made up words that people use in their everyday language. I don't have funny stories to share. I am just me, talking about my life. I was a little crushed and terrified to work on my book.

However, I did eventually started to see people telling me that they could relate to what I was talking about and telling me they couldn't wait to see more. People actually cared about what I had to say and wanted to know more about me and what I was going through. So I finally started to work on my book. I thought I could just take my old blog post and make them chapters in my book. Yet, the more I thought about it the less that made sense. Why would people want to buy my book if over half of it was being shared online for the entire world to see? Why would they want to buy the cow when they were already getting the milk? So, I took the blog posts down and changed the chapters by taking out and adding different things. Those that already read the blogs would see parts of the blog posts, but there would be enough differences that it would not be the same thing.

Recently I edited the first draft of my book and as I was editing it I started to think my book was absolute crap. I talked to another mommy blogger who has self published her own book and took her advice. I sent a few people a few chapters of my book to read them and give me their feedback. I was completely expecting at least a few people to tell me that what they read sucked but they kept telling me they loved what they read and couldn't wait to see more. Like any normal person, you know the ones that have no social life and barely ever leave the house, I spent 12 hours editing my entire book and making the changes on the computer. I took out an entire chapter, added two new ones, and added more information and "meat" to what I already had. I even asked permission from the people I mentioned in the book to use their names. Everyone gave me permission except one. One had his wife threaten to sue me if I used ANYTHING from our relationship in the book. Did I take out everything about him or did I just change it to where you would never have any idea who he was? I decided that since I said nothing about him that could allow people to recognize him off the street I was going to keep that information in the book and just use a different name for him.

My dream of being a published author keeps getting closer and closer. I can't believe it. I just have to get my book to where I think it can't be any better. Then the hard decision comes. Do I self publish or try to find a publisher to print my book? That is something I am not going to worry about right now. I still have a while before I need to worry about that. I cannot believe that in a year or so I will have a book, written by me and about me, that is published and being sold.