How I Became An Indie Author
In 2019, I sat on my bed, apologizing into a headset as I read my badly written first draft smut to a friend. It was supposed to be Twilight with dragon shifters. The quality was reminiscent of something a 13-year-old might have done, but dark circles were under my eyes from staying up late all week to read to my friend.
There was something about it, even as empty, plotless, and lacking in any character growth as it was. There was no villain. Still, the friend wanted to hear more. Part of it was the cringe, I’ll admit, but I’d managed to build suspense and intrigue despite the complete lack of craft in all other areas. I’d also done it in over 40,000 words for the first time.
I don’t remember much from creative-writing class in high school. I knew how to describe things, use similes, metaphors, and keep it succinct while painting a vivid picture. Outside of class, though, I never stretched myself to try anything more than writing smut scenes. They didn’t exceed 2,500 words.
2019 was a turning point. I proved to myself that I could do more than write a short story of 10,000 to 20,000 words. I proved that I liked writing just as much as I liked drawing, which meant I could do more than make a graphic novel. In high school, I’d been confident that was all I’d ever write. No, this was a real start. This was a story I could work a villain and a plot into.
When the pandemic hit, I decided to return to college and, since I was already writing long, boring papers each week, it was somehow easier to sneak in 1,000 to 2,000 words a day on creative projects alongside them. So, I joined bookstagram.
It started with a throw-away book. I knew the first one would probably go unnoticed, and that I’d be a nobody writer for a long time. At the time of writing this, I still am. Instead of goals for success, I only set goals for improvement. I did the best I could to learn how to write a novel and market it.
I wrote and self-edited it in 3 months, building an Instagram presence in 2023. I have a lot of regrets from that year, though. I wish I’d known how valuable ARCs on Netgalley would have been. I wished I’d learned more about covers in my chosen genre before designing mine. I also wish I had spent at least some money on an editor.
The first mistakes fueled me. It made me go beyond just 80,000 words of meandering plot, flimsy character building, and a weak villain. I had to do better than write in tons of filler to reach my word count.
So, I did 5 things differently:
I read as many books as I could find on my next genre (medieval horror). This taught me to balance old words and new sentence structures without sounding like the King James Version of the Bible. This also helped me figure out the genre tropes.
I watched so many YouTube videos from creators like The Cozy Creative, Rachel Oates, Reads with Rachel, Unresolved Textual Tension, Just in Time World Building, Book Fox, Shaelin Writes, and Hartwell the Watcher. There were others, but I don’t remember every channel I tried, only the ones I came back to for helpful advice.
Each time I read a book or watched a video, I reread my manuscript for another edit. I would remove the mistakes mentioned in most of the videos.
I added more characters and fleshed them out.
I got arrogant and decided to break a rule. New authors shouldn’t try too many point of views early on in their career. It’s a daunting task that most can’t pull off. I needed more characters to fill the pages, though, because I didn’t want to settle for a novella. I added seven more characters’ POVs to the main character.
In the end, it all paid off. My medieval horror (Avernal) had over 80,000 words, fully-formed character arcs, strong antagonists, villains who made sense, morally gray, and morally black power struggles, and complex low-fantasy world-building. Most of all, the editing was so much better.
It took a year to write it, but was it enough time? I’m not sure. As a new writer, it’s important to publish before you spend too much time obsessing over the story, but it’s also important to be thorough.
I still have some small regrets. The twists are weak at best and non-existent at worst. While I improved that in my latest work, I still wonder what I could have done to improve Avernal if I’d set it aside and returned to it a year later.
I won’t unpublish it, which is more than I can say for my debut work. The never-ending job of an artist is to improve. I think I can be at peace if it’s not perfect, as long as it shows growth. Without those first books, I wouldn’t have made the leap from casual writing to becoming an indie author.
