I’m doing something a little different with my Wednesday blog posts in April. Together, this four-part series is a deeply personal investigation of the career I’ve created so far. Enjoy, and I hope it brings you some inspiration or clarity!

An Honest Audit, Part One: Why?

I’ve known for a while that I wanted April’s blog posts to be a “peek behind the curtain” of sorts. But I couldn’t quite figure out how to give you all that peek. I wanted the posts to be useful, and also to make sense, and build on each other . . . In short, naturally, I wanted perfection. 😉

So let’s throw all that out the window. The only thing I know for sure is that today I’m going to be honest with you about why I’m here, self-publishing the Alchemical Tales. Later this month we can get into what exactly that entails and how I did it, but to me, why is always the most important question. So that’s where we’ll begin.

It’s tempting to make big generalized statements, like, the only real reason to be an indie author is because you love to write. Behind that statement is the same assumption we make about art, teaching, or working in nonprofits. You won’t make money, so do it because you love the work. Alternatively, you could approach a writing career the same way starry-eyed children think of careers as actors or singers: one day, I’ll make it big, and everyone will know my name. And meanwhile, there are some genres so big–like romance or self-help–that I could imagine someone writing a book purely as a business decision.

What I’m getting at is that none of those fundamental truths are, well, true. So let’s be extremely specific, shall we? Here’s my story:

I like writing a lot. It’s one of those few things that I’m 100% positive I will be doing until I die, no matter how I make money. At night, instead of focusing on worries, I tell myself stories to fall asleep.

But I’m not here because I love to write, and I don’t think simply writing is my purpose.

If you had asked me what I wanted to do in college, I would have told you that I wanted to teach. But not in a classroom–my parents were teachers, and I’d heard quite enough about ill-informed administrators, thank you. That’s what I often told people; to be totally honest, looking back, I think the problem might have been more that I didn’t think I, personally, could captivate a room of students. In the end, I went into museum education. Theoretically, the people who turn up at museums want to be there, so I wouldn’t have to work too hard at captivating them. 😉

Museum education took me to some incredible places, and I learned a lot of off-beat skills (need any grist-milling done?). But ultimately, the museum field suffers from exactly the same thing I thought I was avoiding by not going into schools: ill-informed administration. At my last site, I was deeply unhappy. I wanted desperately to feel like I was reaching people but, for the vast majority of the time, my little historic site and I were forgotten, lost in a much larger organization that ran many parks. Had I had the guts to realize that at the time, I might be a different person now. Instead, with the pandemic came the complete closure of my site and an abrupt layoff that left me devastated.

See, up until that moment, I’d thought that museums were my purpose; or perhaps, more broadly, introducing others to new (past) worlds. But suddenly it was as if society had told me that neither of those things had any value. And underneath that hurt was something more unsettling: the fact that, for months up until that time, I’d been questioning the value of my work myself.

I like stories to have a through line. I like reasons. I like efficiency. For a long time I looked at the broken pieces of my museum career and had no idea what to make of them, and it needled me. There was only hurt there. Why had I ever bothered in the first place? Where was the lesson to take forward? What on earth would I put on a resume??

Well, lesson one: I like working for myself. I’m distrustful of large organizations, and I’m just fine with learning as I go. Now, those are very good reasons to be an indie author. After all, “indie” and “self-publishing” are just the writing-world terms for “entrepreneur.”

And lesson two is buried in there also: I do want purpose. I’m part of the generation who grew up thinking that we should “do work you love,” after all. And I still believe that loving your work is helpful . . . though I’ve learned firsthand the problems with identifying yourself with your work. Especially when your job is something someone else can take away.

It has been years now since I worked at that site. Since then, I’ve worked and volunteered for other nonprofits, but never truly as a career. Instead, I spent a long time thinking about that hobby I’d had since childhood–writing. I did a lot of research. And one year ago this month, I officially launched The Alchemical Tales.

Why? Why The Alchemical Tales, why Red and William and all the others? I had several other writing projects waiting in the wings, after all–raw satirical fantasies, sprawling contemporary dramas, romantic adventures. And cozy mystery is not exactly considered fodder for The Next Great American Novel. Why did I choose cozy?

Because cozy is what I needed most. And because I needed it, I knew the community–the genre–the comparable titles, the markets, all those details they tell you to know before you publish a book. That has all been helpful, but I think the truly important thing is that I believe in Red and her friends. I believe they have something to say. I believe they can help people.

Lesson three: I’m here because I want to help and inspire others.

Above all others, “cozy”–be it mystery, fantasy, or otherwise–is the genre that says “no one here is alone.” At its best and purest, it is the genre that says “you and what you love are worth more than you think,” and “together we can solve this.” Together we can make sense of things; and even if we can’t, we can encourage each other to learn and explore and grow.

. . . Incidentally, that is also a sort of alchemy. 😉

And of course now it is much easier to see how all those past experiences led me here. Through my writing, through my books, I hope to offer community to others and to show them new possibilities. This is a purpose I feel strongly about–strongly enough to try all the scary things like running a business and working towards goals I can’t even fully visualize right now. Last April, when I really launched into this journey, I had only the vaguest guesses about what this April would look like. And I know now that I have no clue where I’ll be next year.

But I know why I will be there.

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