Accepting the Negatives

I hope you have enjoyed reading the excerpts from both of my books.  Even though so far I am a “starving author,” I am absolutely loving this new career.  On my post of June 28, I mentioned I was approaching 200 “likes” on my Facebook page, and now I am going for 250, sitting at 236 as of this writing.  I have to admit I never dreamed I would get 100, much less where I am heading now.  I’m also getting to know other authors, have purchased some of their books, and have written or plan to write reviews of their writings, and they are kindly doing the same for me.  One thing I always loved about my medical transcription career was the friendships I developed and still have to this day with MTs from all over the country.  Now it would seem the same is happening with my communicating with other authors.  It is a true joy to support other authors, especially new ones like myself, as well as their support of me. 

Along with my writer’s Facebook page (facebook.com/PattySeitzWriter), I also have liked other author pages and author publishing pages.  I plan to get active on Twitter and will begin to develop a presence on websites such as Smashwords and Goodreads.  As much as I would love to spend all my time just writing, you also have to market yourself by getting involved with social media and in more than one place.  Facebook allows you to boost your posts for a range of fees from which to choose, and that allows for more than just family and friends to see your post entries.  I have found a lot of author pages spend most of their time promoting their books or books in the works, which is fine, but my approach is a little different.  Obviously I do want people to read my book and future books, so I do promote them on some of my posts, but I also want them to get to know me beyond just the writing.  It’s been quite the journey from medical transcriptionist for 37 years to now working on this new career of writer and blogger.  My hope is that, as readers get to know the person behind the writing, they will want to give my stories a try. 

I mentioned in a previous post that I had a somewhat unpleasant experience with a women’s website message forum, and since then, I have asked a few authors to like my page, since I had liked theirs, only to have them not follow up by liking my page.  At first I was disappointed, but then I realized some of these authors have quite a large following and probably get lots of requests from us newbies and can’t reply to all of them.  At least, that is my hope as to why they chose not to reciprocate the favor.  

I’m actually glad I have had some negative experiences.  It made me realize that if I am one of the lucky ones who does become popular to the point of thousands of readers, I will make a concerted effort to help and support new writers.  It was always such a thrill for me to bring students into the medical transcription profession, and now I hope someday I can encourage and help along new authors, just as many are helping me today.

I’m working very hard on my second novel, A Life Well Loved, the story of my mother’s grandparents, and it’s been wonderful for me to find out things about them and their parents and siblings that I did not know before starting this novel and the researching behind it.  It’s also bringing back memories of things I had long forgotten, so this trilogy is bringing to life family members either from my childhood or even family I never met, but now I feel like I have gotten to know them through my storytelling. 

Changing careers is no easy task.  It’s scary, especially with a writing career where you are putting yourself out there for family, friends, and even strangers to see. It takes a long time to make a living at this, and some never do.  I am very well aware I may never make it to a point of a large reader base, but for now, I’m willing to take that chance.    It’s so true when they say if you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work.  I had that with my medical transcription career (at least most of the time) and now lucky enough to have it with my writing career.  So I am definitely looking forward to see where this journey is going to take me.  I have a shelf that my grandfather built, and I plan to put it back up on my wall and fill it with only books I have written.  It will more than likely look pretty funny with only one book up there (well, two if you count the textbook I wrote), but every journey can only begin with that first step.  I’m on my way.  Thanks for reading and enjoy your day.