My First Step…

Journeying into self publishing.

Pardon the cliché Tolkien quote, but I’m corny like that.

Self publishing has been some of the most stressful work I have ever done. My first story isn’t even available to read yet and I’m still stressing. I’m working my butt off. But before I got to this point, I had a major hurtle to overcome.

There was a force in my mind that was like a wall. This force held me back with fear of taking steps toward my writing goals. The mental blockage some part of me put up seemed impossible to surmount.

I doubt I’m the only self publishing writer who’s experienced this kind of fear. So if you are currently facing your own wall, you can overcome it. I assure you. If I could, anyone can.

But what was this fear?

Is my writing good enough? I had posted Intersection, my forthcoming short story, on a website for storytelling, and I had gotten positive feedback for it. And I had passed it around to friends and family for additional perspectives. These are who I consider my alpha readers. Though my feedback was good, I still questioned my own writing and storytelling abilities. And in my mind, if I’m not good enough, I shouldn’t publish.

Would my story survive out in the wild? This question is yet to be answered, but I’m doing my best to give my creation a decent chance. I’ll certainly update you on this one.

Is my story even long enough to publish? Maybe I should wait until I have a collection of short stories to bundle together. Intersection is the first in a series of interwoven short stories (which will lead into full novels), so it made sense to me to hold off on publishing until more stories were written. Well, I’ve written more stories in the series, but I’m releasing them standalone anyway.

It all boils down to the fear of failure. And that monster is still staring me down. I’m just less chicken-crap now. Still pretty chicken-crap. These fears still haunt me (and I imagine they will always be lurking). But I’m less chicken-crap.

So my first step in self publishing was more like bounding over that wall of doom. It was something I forced myself to do. And no matter the outcome, I’m relieved.

I truly hope my battle with fear can help you, even in a small way.

If you’re interested in pre-ordering my book, you can find it here. It’s only $0.99 before release, which is quite a steal if I do say so myself… and I do.

Next time I’ll tell you about the Alliance of Independent Authors and why I joined it. And why I shouldn’t have joined it when I did. And why I think it’s worth joining. Yeah, it’s going to be a rollercoaster.

But until then, I hope you have a wonderful day,

Colin J Switalski

*This was originally posted on my old blog on June 2nd, 2023.