S2: Day 140 (505)
Word Count: 0
Total: 44071

Spent the free time reading and catching up on TV. It was another emotional day. There's just a lot going on.

S2: Day 139 (504)
Word Count: 0
Total: 44071

Yesterday I felt like emotional garbage, so I didn't do anything productive. 🤷‍♀️

S2: Day 138 (503)
Word Count: 364
Total: 44071

Did some minor maintenance yesterday. Not "fun" words, but they were necessary.

I tried to garden and keep my tomatoes happy. Some plant in the garden decided it a great idea to sting me. Figures.

S2: Day 137 (502)
Word Count: 100
Total: 43707

I wrote a short synopsis for a new plotline I got at random. Not that I need more of those. But now I won't forget it.

S2: Day 136 (501)
Word Count: 0
Total: 43607

No words. I did a lot of other kind of work. :D

Well, just asked for rights back. Wish me luck!

Going to enter the editing cave instead of the writing one, I think. Time to start getting things ready for print!

I suppose I should do the laundry...

My cat must sense that I am stressed. He's very in my business and demanding all the pets.

One more lesson...

When your editor says: "I don't understand your genre" and then later yells at you for not researching enough about a fantasy world that doesn't even exist?

Demand a different editor. Save yourself the headache.

Editing story:

My editor tried to tell me that action and dialogue can't be in the same paragraph. Ever.

"How about now." She laughed.

Was supposed to be...

"How about now."
She laughed.

...according to them at least.😩

I took pictures from multiple Big 6 books showing otherwise and was told that they were wrong. No other authors said anything. They were too busy licking boots.

Lesson 8: Not everyone who says they're an editor can actually edit.

Lesson 9: Stand up for your work!

So that's my story. I haven't actually shared all of this before. Not so publicly. But I hope that it'll shed some light on the process. Not everyone who is a publisher is looking out for you. Not everyone who is a publish is a terrible human being, though either.

Currently, I'm wrestling with so much self-worth issues, I do wonder if it is just ME.

If nothing else, I finally have it off of my chest. Because I was definitely too scared.

Thank you for your time.

THE END

All of this was happening while I was being told how to write by people who didn't know proper dialogue formatting/punctuation and were terrible editors all around. I'll share THAT in a moment.

This lead to the great meltdown and that is why I haven't written much for over a year. I'm definitely emotionally beat. I'm still trying to fight for my rights back on my abandoned baby. No one is making money. Just let me self-pub it and move on, right?

Part Sixteen

I was promised help. Then no response for months. Again. I went onto goodreads and saw that the ebook of my book was published without my knowledge. Another email went out. I demanded rights back. They were denied unless I wanted to pay for all the work that was put into the book (this is standard, so I wasn't surprised, but it was worth a shot!).

But I was devastated. Because my book is out in the world with no support. It was treated like trash.

Part Fifteen

Promises were made and I was feeling better. Then...promises were broken.

I finally emailed and was like: Look, maybe I should just get my rights back and we should move on. Because it seems like a lot is going on.

How am I supposed to have a good book launch without support? I was told that all they had to do was publish the ebook and then all was fulfilled. Which...yes, but I still wanted a successful launch! How can I plan for that? I needed help.

Part Fourteen

I found a house that offered me an advance. Yay! We had some amazing talks, I felt so freaking good about this. SO. GOOD. I was getting a book trailer! It was AMAZING.

Until it wasn't. The week of my ebook release, the publisher went silent. I emailed about once a month asking if everything was okay. I'm generally an understanding person, you know? But nothing. No response. Six months in, I'm told "I'll explain soon." Nothing.

About a year in, we communicated again.

Part Thirteen

After leaving, I wondered if I did the right thing. Often. My mental health was suffering majorly from this formula, and I couldn't keep up. But I thought "maybe I just can't hack it." All of the terrible self-doubt.

Lesson 7: SERIOUSLY. Trust your gut. Don't write what everyone else wants you to write. Book trends are cyclical. Just do you, boo.

Finally, while all of this was happening, I had my biggest CF of a house at the same time.

Part Twelve

Then we were encouraged to write to trend. To trust that the really low quality covers were industry standard! That the object of the game was to pound out a book a month and to keep them between 20k-30k. Maybe 40k at most. To spam the social media with links because that's how you get sales!

I started drowning trying to fit all of these expectations. Drown. I lost my will to write because I was trying to do too much at once. I lost my voice. I bailed.

Part Eleven

This was one of those started out great places. Then the red flags appeared about six months in. There were a lot of favorites and cliques in that house. I was told my book was great, then later one of the beta readers complained it was "too long" at 80k length, so the publisher said: WE NO LONGER ACCEPT BOOKS OVER 60k! Which meant I had to gut my later books in the series that were already written. Lots of story content was wiped out.

But wait...there's more!

Part Ten