Rant : Tired

Ever get to that point in life…where you’re just flat-out, been-through-ther-ringer…TIRED? 

Tired of cats drinking water out of your cup while you type on a substandard keyboard that makes your fingers cramp?

Tired of cats stepping on your keyboard in a way that saves your work, and closes down the document after deleting half of your manuscript?   

Yes…that kind of tired…where you feel like you’re trying to herd cats!

Why (you might ask) don’t I re-tire?

Tried it.  Not fond of abject poverty, food lines, and brain death.  That, and I seem to be one of the few people on Earth who loves his/her job.

I have two jobs.  The second one not only DOESN’T bring in any income, it is presently the source of today’s TIRED!!!

It’s called:  BEING A WRITER

Think of the problem in these terms:

You’re on the road headed toward work.  A mile up the road there’s construction.  It’s slow, but eventually you get past the roadblock.  You call your boss to say you’ll be a few minutes late, but another mile up the road is a train wreck.  You keep waiting for the travesty to be removed, and some guy in a uniform with a megaphone keeps promising, “The road will be clear in a minute.”  But a minute passes, and another, and another, until you stop listening to the empty promises.

Bit by bit, the mess is moved away, and you move forward a few feet.  But wait!  There’s glass on the road and someone with a flat tire is blocking it.  After that’s cleaned up, you move ahead a few feet and then you’re stopped again.  Another round of gridlock.

You call your boss and say, “I’m still stuck in traffic.” 

Your boss sighs and says, “You promised to have that report on my desk as of…now.”

Finally!  You’re whizzing by the scenery…you can see the office over the horizon, and then a tanker full of gasoline explodes a quarter-mile from your position.  The flames are shooting up to the sky, so you call your boss and say, “Look on channel 4-ever news.  That’s what I’m stuck behind.”

By this time, your boss is furious.  “No more excuses!  Take an alternate route and get here by noon or you’re fired!”

So…you get off of the expressway, you’re on a lonely country road that’s going to take twice as long, and find that you’re out of gas.  You flag the next car you see and the driver says, “Sure, I’ll be happy to help you out, but the 5 gallons of gas I bring to your car is going to cost $10 per gallon.”

Desperate to get to work, you agree to the exorbitant cost.  He comes back, you now have gas, and you’re close to your office when you tune into 4-ever news on your radio.  The entire block where your building once stood is a deep hole in the ground.

imgflip.com

Now, for the translation:

My first book was published in 2013.  It is 2019 and I have two books published.  Book #2 is on Kindle, but the interior wasn’t formatted correctly.  I’ve been promising my readers that book two would be in paperback.  Book 3 is ready for publication, but just as I’m desperate enough to use their uploading services, I find out that CreateSpace has merged with Amazon, and the services that were once available through CreateSpace are no longer offered.

CreateSpace services were expensive, but not as much as I just paid to have the interior for book #2 (kindle and paperback) formatted and uploaded.  You see…editor #2 wasn’t thorough and editor #3 caught some glaring errors.  Not that I’m Hemingway, I’m just anal about getting things right.

Yes, I’m so anal about getting my books in the best shape possible that I agreed to 4 times what it would have cost through CreateSpace just to get the interior uploaded by a reliable person — one who isn’t going to fall off the radar when I need him the most, or get a day job and forget I exist.

Book #2 is ready for upload.  My editor just needs to finish reviewing it and make comments.  Her day job is working her to death.  In the meantime, the person uploading the interior is on hold, and the person doing the cover is waiting for a page count that I can’t deliver until…

You get the picture.

Book #3 is ready for publication. The cover is ready, and my patient cover-creator is waiting for THAT book count too. but that has to wait until the interior is ready for upload.

Then, out of the blue, my Amazon world explodes.  Do I really want to publish my book with people who think nothing about allowing scammers to make a fortune while we get 30 cents for every book that is sold?

At this point, I don’t want another editor, I don’t need anyone else to help me with covers, or with uploading the interior.  All I want to do is pull the bed covers over my head.

I’m tired of trying desperately to get from point A (getting my books written) to point B (getting my books published) and finding nothing but gridlock, train wrecks, and obstacles.

I’ll get over it, and at some point all 16 of the books in this series will be published (possibly in another lifetime or an alternate universe).

But at this moment, I’m going to pull the covers over my head, and curl up in bed to contemplate how the human race ever made it out of our caves.

©Joelle (still trying to clean cat poop out of my shoes) LeGendre