It’s an immutable fact of my life that everything I’m doing right, I once did wrong.  Sadly I’m finding this to be just as true for my life as an author and publisher.   It’s sort of depressing really, to reflect on just how wrong I was going about things when I first started my career.   Yet on the flip side, it’s encouraging to see that I’m picking myself up, dusting myself off and moving onward.  So many times I could just have thrown in the proverbial towel and called it quits.   There certainly have been low points in the last few years where I was stumbling around in the dark thinking I’d never make a go of it as a writer.

But perseverance has its perks.

 

Yes, when I started, my first attempts at book covers were less than perfect … far less than perfect.  But bless my little heart, I was just too ignorant at the time to realize how bad they were.

With times comes wisdom.

Yes, the self-editing I did on my first few books was … not quite up to snuff.   It took me a long while to learn how to edit myself as if I were a stranger.  Not an easy thing to do, and something I had no idea I was doing wrong at first.

If I could make a phone call back through time and give myself the benefit of my own advice, I’d tell myself to start blogging and building a social media presence for Jennifer Geoghan Novels well before I was ready to publish.  I should have concentrated more on selling myself as the author, as the figurehead of my brand.

But you live and you learn.

I think I’m writing this as a love letter of encouragement to those just starting out.  Hang in there.  This too shall pass.  I think I speak for most writers when I say that you should never feel like you can’t ask for advice from a fellow writer.  We’ve all been where you are now, and I know for myself, I’m always happy to give advice that will save someone else the trouble I subjected myself to.

The best piece of advice I think I can offer is to be open to change, to finding new ways of doing things.  Experiment and don’t let yourself get married to one idea about anything when it comes to Indie writing and publishing.   If you’re doing it wrong now, do it right tomorrow, but always remember that what’s right today, may be old news come next week.  We live in an ever-changing world and we need to adapt if we want to survive this ever evolving world we’ve found ourselves in.

So good luck to you out there!

Never say die!

Never give up!

And as God as my witness, they’ll have to pry my pen out of my cold dead hands before I stop writing!

-Jennifer

Jennifer Geoghan, author of The Purity of Blood novels and If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online.