R.L. Carpentier, writer

Call it novice naivete, but the accomplishment of finishing a full length novel (or any length anything) should feel like completing a running race. But, it doesn’t.

I’ve run a lot of 5Ks and it always feels the same when you first arrive; the giddy anticipation, you stretch and tell yourself how prepared you are for what you’re about to do. The first part is nice, you’re in a group and there’s plenty of focus on what is ahead as you get into a groove. About the midway part the adrenaline runs out and you suddenly feel like you may not even make it. But you catch a second wind and as you get closer to the end, there are people cheering you on. You take all that positivity and sprint to the end, crossing the finish line.

That’s how writing Our Lady of the Overlook went for me. I was super excited to be committing myself to the process, then found that I didn’t like my approach and reconsidered what I was doing. Then, once I discovered an outlining style that spoke to my brain, I picked up the pace again and powered straight ahead. The last part, the cheering toward the finish line, is when I got other professionals involved who helped me feel like I was on the right path and pushed me to make my product even better. Then I crossed the line…

However, when I finished my last edits of Our Lady of the Overlook at the end of summer, addressing all the recommendations my editor, Jen and my proofreader, Ray had made for the manuscript, I found myself continuing on and not stopping. Maybe this is not the 5K I was training for, and maybe I’m in a marathon.

So, my recent activities have included almost anything but writing. I’ve been doing social media posts and updating my website. I had to open up a PayPal business account, an Amazon KDP account, and look into accountants. I attended my first author conference at Killer Nashville, starting to maneuver within writer circles and glean any and all knowledge I can from their experiences. As an introvert, I gave a lot of energy to those three days.

This past week I managed to get my store set up and upload everything to Amazon, which was tedious, if not difficult. But I now have to market the book; post about it, answer questions about it, try to entice people to buy it. It feels as though my marathon has a giant hill on the route.

I won’t say I wasn’t prepared and all this marketing/selling is a huge surprise. I did my research and knew that this was part of the race, but its something I’ve found hard to prepare for ahead of time. I’m kind of flying by the seat of my pants, which has some fun to it, because it feels less like work and more like an experiment. Take this blog, for instance, this is only my second post and I’m just winging it, so to speak. I’m going to have to figure out how to keep this up week after week. Won’t that be fun?

So, it may be that writing and publishing is not a race, because there is no finish line. It’s something that I have to be motivated to do every day if I want to actually get somewhere. It’s running for its own sake and it’ll only end when I give up.

But don’t give up, never give up.