Looking back at my first...

My current work in progress is the third book of a series. Me and my unreliable memory, forgot a surname of a character (not the main)I had to look for it in book 1 of the series.

I couldn't help my self reading part of the story while searching for the name. To my horror I noticed how bad my writing was, It's atrocious compared to how I write now and my current writing itself is a horror.

Still it made me feel good, at least I have some evidence now that I'm showing some progress, but it also made me feel anxious. Anxious about all the work I still had to do before I'm able to publish my work. I have to become much more skilled before I can do that.

I want my work to be good before I put it out for sale. I'm not a perfectionist(at least I think I'm not one...or I believe I'm not one), I don't seek the perfect book, but I do want one that's of a good enough quality that will do justice to the story.

I believe that to have a successful writing career the writing needs to be qualitatively good and the story should be great. As a writer you want your possible readers to lose themselves in your story and you want to avoid that bad grammar and spelling will yank them out of it.

Satisfied readers are those that will buy your next book and will talk about you and your books to their colleagues, friends and family. I really think the best marketing is done by them, the horde satisfied readers one hopes to get, their excitement will nudge the want into others.

I'm looking forward for the time I'll have my work out there in the wild for the first time, I'm yearning to make the first sale, but most of all I'm anxious to be able to deliver quality work in time.

The time I refer to is the moment before e-books will peak in popularity. The time we live in is an exciting time for (self)publishing, it's the moment you can go with the first few waves into a new era. After this peak you will only be one of the many that will follow instead of those that led the way to greatness. I do not want to be the one that follows, picking up the scrapings left by those that came before.

The feeling that I might miss out knots my stomach in a painful clinch. This uncomfortable feeling is a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that it drives me to work hard and harder, to keep trying no matter what. It's a curse in that I can see my own shortcomings and that puts me at times in a very blue mood.

I'll keep struggling with the words and my stories and they themselves are in my mind struggling for their time to come out and be written and with my hand yet too slow to write fast and well, those stories have a long time waiting.