Patience

Everything made so much more sense at the beginning of the year.

I was focused. Driven. I had high hopes about releasing numerous books. There were plans in place, the concept simple.

First up? Release a collection of erotic short stories. Seemed simple. I wasn’t a stranger to reading or writing erotica by any means. I’m good at it. Maybe even better than good.

Seems easy, right?

I overlooked one small factor.

I can only write erotica in short bursts. Once or twice a year, I get the urge to pen some. It’s not as consistent as the other genres I write in.

In January, I put everything else aside to write the collection, and I was highly motivated. I planned to stuff the scenes into one book. After that, I would promote it, get the monkey off my back, and go back to my other genres. I was prolific, setting targets, crushing them. I had over 40,000 words even after taking several scenes out. I had useful feedback from my beta readers, but one piece of feedback stood out: there were too many scenes.

In my panic to write as many words as possible, I’d rushed through several scenarios, wanting a larger word count. The feedback was that the scenes were intense, and it was overwhelming reading them one after the other. I made a decision that has plagued me ever since: I chose to split them into multiple collections.

It seemed smart. After all, more collections meant more money, if done right. I decided which stories would be bundled together, had covers made, planned my marketing strategy. The blurbs were ready. I had the right keywords. I was ready.

My manager requested to read the collections before I published. My plan was to release them within weeks of each other. He proofed MM1, outlined some areas of improvement, which we discussed, deciding whether to amend or leave each one. I made the changes, and released MM1.

It was stressful from the moment I pressed ‘Publish.’

I had some promo in place, yet my ads were blocked by Instagram/Facebook, due to their unwillingness to promote sexual content. My passion for erotica was ebbing at this point, and the stress of publication added to it. I was obsessed with checking the numbers on day one, annoyed people weren’t immediately buying.

My passion for erotica dimmed, I moved onto my Target series, and threw myself into editing and tweaking them. Erotica was a hindrance, exasperating me to the point where my manager advised me to stop checking sales and ‘page reads’. I did, and haven’t looked since.

My manager was proofing MM2 at this point, and I was outlining a few additional scenes for MM3, along with my editing. He took his time, wanting the scenes to be right. I just wanted to release the collection and move on, and we clashed over this. He asked me to request people leave reviews, and I flat-out refused, saying I’d tried before and no one listened. I suggested multiple times that he ‘leave the collection’ to me, and I would tidy up the scenes and just release them, wanting to focus on the rest of my year, driven by the idea of having more titles in my backlist.

We went back-and-forth, but he essentially reminded me that I wasn’t the sort of novelist to release sub-standard work, and told me I would regret it if I did. He was right. His feedback for MM2 was brutal, logical, and utterly to the point. I implemented the necessary changes, wrote up my additional MM3 scenes, and here we are.

The lesson here is that he was right to suggest I wait. Blindly releasing books isn’t in my character, and I’m a long way off becoming the salesman I want to be. What I have going for me above all else, is my skill with the pen. I can’t compromise that in order to churn out books.

I need to find that ever-elusive balance.

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