On Publishing Another Book.

So I published another book this week.
I have come to the point that I never really know what to make of this moment.  On the one hand it is big accomplishment and a goal that I set for myself which is now completed; on the other hand I wonder how much difference it is really going to make.

I have sort of given up the idea that somehow I am going to be a professional writer.  This was sort of disappointing but the sales of my books (I have seven now) have convinced me that this is not really the sort of thing that is going to happen for me.  Yes, there is always that outside chance that I will become a new undiscovered writer, but my writing is such that I am not mainstream enough to ever really be discovered.

So pretty much I write for my own pleasure and in the hopes that I will do some good for someone.   Yes, occasionally someone will buy a book and I will get that sense of having accomplished something but it is few and far between at this point.  Trust me, I am hardly getting rich at this.

How many more will I write?  I have one more definitive book that I am working on, in a sense my magnum opus for this genre that I am writing in.  After that, a compilation of my shorter writings is doable (I have written enough to make a book of them).  And after that?  I am not sure. I will have done what I originally set out to do, which was to publish a book (and more than one).  I will have (probably) found out that I am not a writer, or at least not a self supporting one.  Lesson learned, goal achieved, and move on.

Will I continue to write?  Certainly. It is a good exercise in many many ways, not the least of which is pushing one's self to a daily discipline of writing and (hopefully) some self discovery along they way.

But that is what is is and will be - a voyage of self discovery and documentation.  The other dream, it seems, is gone.

But I can always now say that I am a published author.