Elliot Kessler

Writing is hard. That was never debatable. Becoming an author will be a struggle; it will take a lot of time before anything starts to happen. But it seems like I’m working so hard and writing so much, but I do not see any results. No one is reading these blog posts, no one is reading my serial novel, and no one is buying my short stories. It’s causing a lot of doubt and insecurity, and I’m having difficulty dealing with that. Specifically today, but I feel like this has been building up over the weekend.

See, during the weekend, I only wrote on Saturday, and even then, I only wrote for a little bit. (I’m not counting Friday, by the way. I thought I would put that there in case anyone did.) I was writing all week last week, and I decided to take a break before getting back into it this week. During my break, I began to think about my writing. This is probably because, after last week, it’s been engraved in my mind, and I cannot stop thinking about it. Anyways, my family and I were celebrating my granny’s and my mom’s birthdays on Sunday. We held the celebration in the community room at the RV park my grandparents live at. In the community room, there was a bookshelf for their “community library.” It was like one of those small community libraries in neighborhoods where you come, leave a book, and take a book. On the bookshelf were some old issues of “Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine,” which is a literary magazine that, obviously, publishes mystery stories. I picked it up and began reading the first story, and realized that I still haven’t been published by a magazine.

I’ve written only a handful of shorts which I have sent off to magazines, but one of them I poured my heart and soul into, and I was really proud of it. But, so far, it doesn’t matter what magazine I send it to. It keeps getting rejected again and again. That hurts. Especially since, while reading this story, I only found it to be average, and I know that I write things like that. I might submit to sci-fi magazines instead of mystery magazines, but it really stinks when someone else’s story, which you read and think it is genuinely a bad story, wins over yours. This happened in high school, too. I submitted to a short story contest and got beat by a “story” that was simply a bunch of words put on a page. That won first place. It was the worst thing I have ever read. Sure, my story was a basic, nerdy fantasy short, but at least I had imagination and invented new things. I didn’t simply throw words at a page. It was rediculous, and, even though I expected to lose, I didn’t expect to lose to that. It was disappointing to say the least.

It wasn’t until I began publishing my serial novel that I began to see some rewards to writing. I began to receive bonuses from Amazon, and received a total of around $100 by the end of writing the novel, but I didn’t get it because people were reading my work, because they sure as heck were not. I was simply getting it because. I still have no idea why I got paid, but I did. Looking at the lifetime reports from Kindle Direct Publishing, I only got around 13 total reads for the first chapter. Even though it was free, I still was very proud of that. Every single one of those meant so much to me. The last chapter of the novel, which was not free, has two total reads. I am still super proud of that. It might only be two, but I value those two reads so much. That’s what I’m hanging on to right now. That’s the only thing I’m hanging on to, aside from the hope that things will get better. I have read and watched quite a few articles and videos about becoming an author or a blogger, and they all say that it takes time to see anything, but it is still so frustrating to be working so hard, sacrificing tons of time and energy to create content that no one cares about. I’m already alone, and this almost makes me feel like I’m more so.

Sorry for complaining so much. I just thought I would share my thoughts here, and hopefully, if you’re going through something similar, I can help you feel like you’re not alone. I’m here to talk about it if you need someone. Thank you so much for reading. It really does help so much. I appreciate it. I hope to see you guys in the next post! God bless you.