The Insecure Writer and Finally Completing That First Draft

Today is December's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.

What makes me an Insecure Writer this month?

Knowing that I’m about to enter a new stage of my writing career.   


I had many writerly goals for 2019.  Most of them won’t be met—no surprise there—but I feel fairly confident that I will finish the first draft of my debut urban fantasy by the end of December. There is still plenty of editing to do before it’s ready for publication, but I’m on the home stretch. 

Photo courtesy of VisualHunt

As happy as this makes me, it also means I’ll have to start worrying about the rest of this writing business. Cover designers, formatting concerns, figuring out the Amazon system, marketing, mailing lists, reader magnets, social media. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time studying these topics over the past several years, which means I now know enough to know what I don’t know. It all sounds very exciting, if not outright daunting, but I’m ready to dive into the deep end. 

And, of course, while all this is going on, I need to be writing the next book in the series, since the experts say that long periods of time between releases tends to kill interest in a series. 

This month's IWSG question is:

How would you describe your future writer self, your life and what it looks and feels like if you were living the dream?

If I were really living the dream, I’d be living in a castle somewhere in Britain, living off the proceeds from my writing, and sharing tea with J.K. Rowling. In reality, I’d hope that 

1). the writing would come more easily after having a few books under my belt. 

2). I’d have moved on to my next series (or two). 

3). That most of the marketing stuff would be running on automatic. 

In other words, I’d want my writing to seem more like a real job and less like a pipedream. 

Until next year!


ChemistKen