published author – Juniper and Daisies

I’ve an Author Page on Goodreads and I Need to Tell the World

I have an author page on Goodreads (and, on Amazon), and finding out this exciting news has made my entire day.

I never thought I’d have one of these, even as I thought about how I’d absolutely, without a doubt, become a writer. I was a pre-teen, scribbling down my ideas and writing out small chapters for novels that kept popping into my head. I knew that I was going to do something with writing, but I wasn’t sure what I would do.

I thought I’d go to journalism school, checking out the best ones, which meant leaving my province. I decided, before leaving thankfully, that journalism wasn’t the right stream for me, and landed on just a plain ol’ English degree. Exciting, I know.

Still, I knew I would become a writer. I almost had a job, just out of University, writing for a new magazine, but that venture went under. I don’t know why they thought it was a great idea to start a magazine just as all print was falling, but they gave it a shot and that’s all that matters. Still I held onto hope.

I didn’t do much writing, and did a lot of drinking for a couple of years, as most writers do. I traveled; I partied; I ‘gathered stories’ from my life. I wrote only when I felt the urge, which was a decent amount of time, but not nearly enough to actually make a go of anything. I was stuck in that weird writer world where I thought I’d get published just for writing…not, you know, actually trying to get published.

Over a decade later, literally, I started writing more seriously. I had been on Upwork before it blew up, writing for pennies, but quit to write my own stuff. I wrote on Medium for a company before I even knew what Medium was. I started a blog. Then, started a new blog. Then, updated that blog. Then, as of this year, I trashed that blog and started new. I also published my first book. It didn’t feel the way I thought it would, but that’s okay. Now that I have three books under my belt, it feels the way my teenage brain thought it would.

I feel excited. I feel like I’m a real author. All because of an author page on Goodreads. Self publishing can feel like you’re just writing things down in a notebook, or drawing on a piece of paper, hanging your poems and artwork on your fridge. It’s hard to feel like a ‘real’ author because you have no publishing house to back you up. No editor. No marketing persons. Just you and yourself reading through Amazon’s tips and trying to figure out just what in the hell you’re actually doing.

These two author pages, but especially the Goodreads as I did not make that one up myself, are what I needed to push myself forward. To publish more kid’s books. To finish those novels that have been sitting on my computer, collecting dust, abandoned and alone due to Imposter Syndrome setting in.

I may not be a New York Time’s bestselling author, but I’ve sold books. People, besides friends and family, have purchased my book. All I need to do is keep working, keep pushing forward, and maybe one day I’ll hit that list. And, if not, that’s okay, too. Because even without making a ton of money or hitting a bunch of lists, I’m still a published author.

I Published a Book and it Feels…Not How I Imagined

At the start of the year, my friend and I did something really cool — we published a baby book together. It was fun planning out what the book would look like, getting together to talk about our project at a Starbuck’s (obviously) and putting it all together. I wrote the story, she did the illustrations, and we took over a month trying to figure out how to self-publish on Amazon without ruining the illustrations.

I thought it would be such a joyous moment, publishing my first book, thought it would feel exciting to brag to people that I did something I had only dreamed of doing. It didn’t really work that way, though. Imposter Syndrome was taking hold of my brain and there was nothing I could do about it. After the exciting moment of hitting publish wore off, I started to worry about what people would think. Would they hate the writing? Would they think it sounds stupid? Would they hate the illustrations? Would they think they could have written a book like this and make more money than us? Would people laugh in our faces for even trying?

There were a lot of ‘would theys’ running through my mind, more than I thought could fit in there at one time. I always knew I would have some nervous feelings and doubt in that I could do something like publish a book – I just didn’t know it would take a hold of me so strongly.

Some of it came down to the fact that the book didn’t look exactly how we imagined it to. We couldn’t do an actual board book, which is best for babies who like to chew and rip at pages, because Amazon doesn’t offer that type of printing. We had to change some of the colours we used on the illustrations as when it was scanned into the computer it didn’t take properly. We had to re-imagine what the layout would look like as the book needed to be a certain number of pages to be published and the writing wouldn’t show up as nicely as we thought it would on the pages.

Not only did I have the regular Imposter Syndrome, I was having doubts on how our book looked. Changing styles and formats can happen when publishing, of course, that’s nothing new. Having to do such things yourself is stressful. A lot more stressful than people make it out to be. This is also why people don’t self-publish automatically. We decided we didn’t care and just wanted to do it, a thought-process that has taken me literally over a decade to realize.

Even though the publishing process wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be, I’m still feeling excited for the future. We’ve already started on a second baby book, getting ready to publish that bad boy by spring. As any writer knows, sometimes you just need to get the story out, regardless if anyone reads it. It may not be a novel (yet), but it’s a fun way to tell a story. It may not have been perfect, but what road is? Stop listening to that Imposter Syndrome and go for your dreams; it may not lead you where you thought, but you’ll have taken the chance on yourself and that means so much more.

Want to check it out? I made a whole page dedicated to my published book right here on this blog.