CreateSpace Insanity

Feeding the cat before going to work.

A long time ago in a mindset far, far away,  life used to be so simple:

1. Write a book on a manual typewriter.
2. Send it to a publisher.
3. Wait 6 months for the rejection letter.
4. Repeat mailing manuscript 10 times.
5. Put the manuscript into a closet, raise 5 children and become so insane by the time the last one leaves home that when your best friend from high school asks, “Whatever happened to your book?” you drool at her and stutter, “Book? What Book?”

Fast forward from the age of the Saber Tooth Tiger to the age of Genetically Modified Foods. Now there are computers, flash drives, and nearly instant publishing choices like CreateSpace.

It means that instead of waiting 30 years for it to happen, you can instantly go insane while sitting at your large screen monitor.

How can something this big still have fine print?

It sounded so simple:

1. Sign up.
2. Sign in.
3. Receive an email from them that asks a bunch of questions it takes ½ a day to answer.
4. Receive email back a few hours later saying, “We see you’ve chosen the do-it-yourself method,” followed by a bunch of nice words that (loosely translated) mean: “You made us read all those crappy answers—for nothing?”
5. Slog through the “What’s this?” in 2 font blue letters to figure out what the hell you’re supposed to do.
6. Download your manuscript in the format that a friend has slaved to put together for you over the past month (for free) only to get a message that says (loosely translated)…………….. !!!DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER!!!
7. Then spend 4 hours using eyesight you don’t have, trying to figure out why there’s a problem with the way the manuscript looks on virtual paper only to find nothing, nada, zilch, zero and wonder if they’re paying a practical joker overtime to come up with this crap. 

!!!BREATHE, FLORIDABORNE….BREATHE!!!! 

So where am I in the process now? Since I’m not an artist and don’t have a cover, I’m looking into paying for one to be made.

Translation: 

I’m ready to ask a 3^rd grader to draw a circle & 2 stick figures using finger paint

and call it a life.

Then there’s a bio? What can I say–that I had a really bad poem published in an obscure dog magazine? Should I talk about all the articles I’ve written for newsletters since the days when they were printed on mimeograph machines (and no, I didn’t sniff the ink)?

Should I talk about how writing has saved my sanity?   Or than I’m addicted to blogging?  Or that I’m really, really good at screwing up anything that has moving parts, electronics and requires the sequencing abilities of a 4th grader?

Not when my sanity is presently in great peril.

What does a 1/2 blind dyslexic woman who barely knows how to use a computer and lives in a cave have to do to get a 400 page comedy love story SciFi onto Kindle?????

I supposed the first step is to go insane.  

That, I can do.