Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time in a land far, far, away...

Well, maybe not a land, but a time 11 years ago there was a book. And this book was entitled Forgiveness. The premise for it was good, but being a beginning author I just didn’t know what to do, and how to do it properly. This was when I was publishing under the name of A.J. Best.

I’d like to think that I have grown as an author, but there are times when self-doubt gets in my way. Here’s what happened...

In 2012, I was sitting in a Pizza Hut in a town near me when the email came in. I slid the phone over to my fiance and said, “Here, you open it. I can’t!”

When his face didn’t fall or look like he was going to say, “Oh, maybe next time.” I said, “WHAT!” and grabbed the phone right out of his hands. When I read the email, I yelled out, “I’m an author, I sold a book!” The moment was filled with lots of cheers and applause from the neighboring tables (because that’s how small the community is) and I just couldn’t stop smiling. When our pizza came, I ignored it because I was calling EVERY person I knew so I could tell them that I sold my book!

After we left Pizza Hut, we went over to Big Lots (or I think it was Big Lots - it was some store like that) and continued to call everyone. I kept apologizing to my fiance for ignoring him while we were shopping and he just smiled and waved me away. What a good man.

Next came edits. And luckily there were so few edits left when I sent them to the editor (I had sent it to every eagle eye I knew to help me get it as tight as could be) that it took me only minutes to fix. Lucky me, I hear it’s not always that easy.

Long story short, they showed me the cover. I asked for a tweak or two and it was finalized and the release date they gave me, was July 7, 2012 - two days after my birthday!

Little did I know that I knew NOTHING about marketing, and I was only able to sell 50 copies of my book. And of those 50 copies sold, only 7 ratings were given with 3 reviews. I was mortified!

Then the publisher went out of business and I figured, “Why not send it over to another publisher I know?” But when I finally got it over to her, she told me that it wasn’t good enough and I needed to flesh out the story more and have more sex scenes in it for me to put the label of ‘erotica’ on it (which is where the other publishing house had it). All I heard from that was, “It’s not good enough.”

That threw me for a loop for many years, and I didn’t pick up the proverbial pen for many years. When I finally did pick it up, I was very worried about it being ‘good enough’ that I edited, and re-edited the first two chapters to death and never got any farther. But, for the past 157 days, I have really given myself the permission to be ‘not good enough - until I finish, then I’ll edit’. 

So fast forward and I’m only two chapters away from finishing my discovery draft (rough draft/draft zero depending on who you talk to) and then I can take on editing my first draft. I am going to take some time to do some deep character building before I work on that, but I think that I’ll be well on my way through edits by March 2023.

Have you ever felt ‘not good enough’ for something? Here’s my advice... stop! You are good enough. And even if you aren’t, who cares? If it brings you joy and a sense of purpose, it’s good enough.