I decided I wanted to actually do something with the novels I’ve been working with over the years, so I posted one on Inkshares and then was encouraged to join the Geek & Sundry contest and start funding. 

I did a lot of research on how to run a successful campaign, and it all seemed to boil down to messaging literally everyone you’ve ever met and asking them to support you. I started easy, with people that I knew I could count on. Then, I branched out to people I was acquainted with, and then I moved on to people that I sort-of-kind-of-knew. All of these, even down to messaging people I know very well, has been an introvert’s anxiety induced nightmare.

This has been an exhausting adventure, made more exhausting by the fact that I’m introverted and it is really hard to ask people for help or to support me. I’m only a month into a three-month contest/campaign and going forward seems daunting.

I’ve already gotten nasty messages from people,  sadly most were authors that I did nearly free or completely free design work for and had felt confident they would return the favor of with their support. The response rate, or lack-thereof from people that I know has been equally disheartening. The need to keep up in a contest that is solely driven on the amount of people you know, and can get onboard with your project, and less about the quality of your writing is exhausting, especially for writers who are not comfortable with sharing their work or do not have a vast network. 

My saving grace has been in my very close friends who have pushed the book to their network, and when I say push, I mean going to people personally (friends, family, and co-workers) and getting them on board with pre-ordering.

Yesterday, I took a big hit in the motivation area. When you realize the campaign or contest you’re in is very carrot-and-stick with the prize continuously moving forward and you continuously chasing it, on top of tumble-weed replies or cricket responses in your network, you get knocked a couple of pegs in that department. When I get bummed a friend says, "You’re allowed to throw a pity party for one day, and then the next day you get back to work."

I’ve been through a lot in life, things far worse than the stress of this campaign, and so I have to remind myself that this is a cakewalk, even if losing will close a really great door for me. I grew up poor, I worked to put myself through college while taking care of my elderly grandmother. I gave all of myself, emotionally and monetarily, to parents and to the point I had to move a thousand miles away, with little money and no job, in order to save what was left of me. I’ve been desperate. I’ve been broken. I’ve cried myself to sleep nights on end, but no matter what happened in life I kept pushing. I worked endlessly, and I still do. Sixteen hour work days are "normal days" for me. 

Sorry for the longness, it is a personal problem with finding it hard to write short things. I wrote a blog post a while back about motivation and goals, you can find it here.

I will readily admit that I’m really not good at self-promotion. Before joining Inkshares, I’ve been pretty reluctant to even share my writing with anybody, so advertising it as something worth buying is a real struggle for me. 

Putting my writing up on social media for everybody I know to read has been a really difficult, anxiety-inducing thing for me to do; which has made it even harder to not feel defeated on the days where I’ve put in a lot of effort sharing my work and doing updates and haven’t seen any effect. 

It can feel disheartening, to see other campaigns climbing higher and higher, further away from you, but there are two things keeping me motivated:

Whether it does well in the competition, reaches publication level or not - and at the risk of using cheesy cliches - I already feel like a winner.

Here’s to the roller-coaster to come!

Cheers everyone.

Cem