This past week a friend and I debated e-publishing vs. traditional publishing.  As all writers are probably now aware, the publishing world is in upheaval.  Publishers and agents struggle to find reasons for their existence in this new world of hand-held readers and the ability for authors to be their own agent and publisher.  In all the changes there is still some stigma attached to self-publishing, and writers as well as publishers still feel self-publishing is done only when no one else wants your manuscript.  I have seen printed books that have been self-published that are full of typos and other errors, and I have seen books published through the e-publishing process that are professional.  But the pros and cons isn’t what I wanted to talk about here, because my friend said something that made me come to a complete stop in the conversation (during a writer’s group) in order to pause and let her words sink in.

My wise friend talked about how many writers have their egos tied up in belonging to a publisher.  In other words, most writers don’t feel professional or ‘published’ if they cannot say that they have a contract with a large publishing entity.  Her question was, shouldn’t a writer’s success be tied up in the readers, not the publisher?  Think about that for a minute.  Does a writer judge themselves a success because of one contract rather than by the number of books sold?  I know writers want lots of books to sell, but which makes you feel more of a success?  Let’s be honest here.  If I say that I have an agent and that Random House has given me an advance and a contract for a series, I’m going to feel like a ‘real writer’, compared to how I would feel if I told friends and family that I’d just posted my manuscript with Kindle and had sold fifty books.  Why is that?  Probably because of how long I’ve been writing and marketing.  Hate to say it, but if I was younger, more internet-savy, maybe I would find e-books just as thrilling and exciting as a paper copy on a shelf. 

Which raises a topic for another day in how messed up writers are when it comes to defining success as a writer.

But my friend is right.  Our egos, our need to feel like ‘real’ writers, our desire to call ourselves ‘authors’ rather than just ‘writers’ is tied up in the idea of publishing rather than in the more ephemeral concept of readers.  And wow, what kind of over inflated ego is that?  I want readers who love my stories, who want to live in those story worlds with me, and who want to sit back and talk stories and books and writing.  Not for ego, but for the love of the story. 

Of course, making money and having a contract wouldn’t be all bad, either.

My father always questioned his parentage, for many reasons.  One was that his father told him when grandpa died, there was a letter in his safe deposit box that would clear up dad’s questions.  But when grandpa died, that letter vanished.  And so my father died with no resolution to the story I heard growing up.  A few years ago, I decided the only way to lay that question to rest would be to answer it myself, and so I wrote a story with what I wanted that answer to be.  Of course the story took on a life of its own, the characters ran away with it, and it became a much fuller story than I’d anticipated.

The novel was done before cancer, and had gone to Poisoned Pen Press, who had asked me to do some editing on it.  Cancer and radiation brought that process to a halt for two years.  I struggled through editing during radiation and it was the hardest writing I have ever done.  Every single word was a battle.  I think that battle was reflected in the writing because Poisoned Pen then passed on the second edit.  And then when radiation was over, going back to that story, or to any story, was just too much.  But as the oncologist promised me, writing is slowly coming back.

This past week I pulled that story out.  I haven’t looked at it in over a year.  I don’t even remember writing parts of it.  I read it as if it was a book I’d picked up at the library, and immediately fell into the story and was swept away by it.  As I read I did minor editing, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared and assumed.

I fell in love with that story all over again. The time of battling it, struggling with it are gone.  I wonder now if the story was a symbol of the physical battle I was going through.

Either way, yesterday I spent all day with a tea-pot and an old friend, and came away from it for the first time in a very long time, feeling like I am, once again, a writer.

We have been waiting for high-speed internet, which is scheduled to arrive the end of June.  I’m as excited as when we got electricity a few years ago.  And that thought brought back some memories.  Like generating electricity from a water wheel.  Melting snow on a wood stove for washing.  Waking up in the mornings with blankets frozen to the wall.  I also remember times when I would go into town to pick up mail and realize for whatever reason, power was out and everything dark.  I wouldn’t know because I had my own little environment at home that was separate from county power.

That leads me to think about writing as a practice that requires long spaces of time in isolation.  Even if that isolation is simply alone in our thoughts giving birth to a story.  I’ve posted in the past about writing in coffee houses, but really, the highest percentage of writing is done alone.  And yet as all writers know a conundrum exists in that besides requiring isolation we also need exposure, people to watch, conversations to eavesdrop on, experiences to learn from.  We must write with a swinging door, slamming it shut while the words pour out, and swinging it wide open when the words dry up.

For me, isolation, whether in writing or in my personal life, feeds me and keeps me sane.  My rough home in the woods gives me the foundation I need to let words out, so that I can then go out into the world and collect some more.  At least until I get on people overload.  Luckily my husband and son have the same tolerance level for crowds and noise.  And luckily they understand when I need to retreat, just me and the words.  And the woods, and the creek, and the wind…oh, and the occasional bear seeking his own isolation in my garbage can.