If you choose the path of an indie author, you are bound to meet people who will make you want to quit. People who will try to cheat you by offering useless marketing services to promote your books. People who will tell you that you will never achieve success. People who will lose interest in your books without reading them after you tell them the amount you receive in royalties.
Some of us are lucky to have supportive family and friends. Having said that, I should add that a lot of indie authors I’ve communicated with on social media over the last three years admit that even those from their closest circle aren’t really interested in their writing journey. Some find support and motivation in local writing groups. There are also writers with an academic background in literature, and they find support among their students and peers.
Yet, for many of us, our writing journey remains a solitary endeavour, and we consider ourselves fortunate if at least one person from real life passionately believes in us and we have managed to establish a network of indie authors through interactions on social media.
Since I’m among those authors who don’t have an extensive network of supportive relatives and friends, I try to understand what prevents people from cheering up those who decided to follow their dreams.
Family
I think that the hardest is when your family don’t support you. I’ve talked to someone on one of my social media accounts, and they shared that neither their spouse nor children think they have the right to spend the time they could spend tending to the garden on ‘scribbling’. “You’ll never get published,” the loving relatives say.
The reasons for such an attitude are purely egoistical. At least that’s how I see it. If a writer is a stay-at-home parent, their spouse might think that they must concentrate solely on taking care of the family members. In other words, if you don’t bring income, you have no rights and no choice to do anything outside your ‘direct responsibilities’.
The paradoxical thing about it is that if a writer is employed and earns their share to pay the bills, they might be accused of the same thing. It’s not a secret that not much time is left for a person with a full-time job to indulge in rest and hobbies. And writing is an extremely time-consuming activity. Spending one’s time writing means not spending it with one’s family.
Friends
I consider myself fortunate that my closest friend supports me on my writing journey. She doesn’t read my books – for objective reasons – but she cheers me up constantly and is always interested in listening to me telling her about pros and cons of being an indie author.
Other friends are indifferent at best. They might ask if I am still writing and how sales are going, and that’s about it.
To stay on the fair side, I have to say that over the years, the few solid friendships I had developed during my time at the university and at various work places have dissolved somehow. It is known that when people stop sharing the same everyday environment, they often lose contact. That’s what happened to me and my friends I guess. With some of them, we did keep in contact for years after we stopped studying or working together. I am a loyal person, and I don’t let go of something I cherish easily. A few years ago I found the paper letters one of my friends sent me from the USA, where she worked under the Work & Travel programme for students, more than twenty years ago.
Still, moving abroad, starting families, and finally, the pandemic broke most ties I had with friends.
Acquaintances
I’ve been told by an acquaintance that ‘nowadays, everyone writes’, and, to be honest, I didn’t quite understand what they meant by it. Either to prevent me from boasting – which I never do – or maybe, and I’m inclined to believe that it is so, they needed to assure themselves of their own lifestyle’s value.
I don’t know if this is envy or a sincere failure to understand why someone might want to write books. Most probably, it depends on a concrete person. Some – just like myself until only a few years ago – don’t believe in things like ‘finding your calling/true self’, talent, or self-fulfilment. In their lives, there is no place for such ‘nonsense’ as ‘writing books’. While others maybe dream about doing something else with their lives but haven’t yet found an opportunity to try and have persuaded themselves that it’s impossible and ‘everyone lives like this’.
These are, of course, only speculations. I don’t know what people think when they diminish one’s creative efforts. It is quite possible that they don’t give it any real thought at all but say these things automatically.
To finish these musings on a positive note, a few months ago, I was incredibly touched by the reaction of people whom I just met when they found out that I am a writer. They were so sincerely interested in everything – my books, how independent publishing works, how I come up with my stories, if I have reviews and what readers say – that I felt overwhelmed. I am so used to a vague, polite interest that always evaporates after my confession that I don’t make a living from books that these people’s attitude seemed like a miracle. And when they actually read one of my books and loved it…
Well, I always say this and I hope I will have faith to continue repeating it – do not give up. Follow your dreams. Even if you have to swim against the strongest currents most of the time.
It is worth it.
Eve's Book Diary 
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