The Curse of Impatience

One of the hardest thing about trying to sell stories on my own is suppressing my bouts of impatience. Normally, I am a very patient person. I teach four year olds how to play the violin so having a calm approach to life is essential. 

In general, I have the mindset: "Hey, I'm selling over twenty copies a month. That's great! Twenty random strangers every month are reading my work." But this seems to go completely out the window at times. I've always been a night owl. It's not at all unusual for me to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning. This is usually my optimum writing time. But I've noticed this is also when I am most vulnerable. 

I'll hit a dry spell in whatever story I'm working on. The scene is just not playing out on paper the way it is in my head. Needing a distraction, out of habit more than anything else, I will check my sales. The days where it says "no sales for today" are the worst. I clutch my computer screen and growl "Why aren't you selling things for me?!?" Fortunately, my computer is more rational than me during these moments. So it just waits for the storm to past and we move on. 

But it's at moments like that where I wonder what else I can do. Surely, there has to be a faster way to generate sales? Why is there no site that just allows you to sign up and POOF you get an automatic 100 sales a month from adoring customers? 

Alas, life is not fair like that. At least the actual writing is something I CAN control. Just have to focus on that.

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 13, 2011 at 5:32 AM

    I can't begin to imagine how much patience you must need to teach the violin to four year olds!

    Great blog. Good luck with Payroll.

    Helen

    ReplyDelete

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