Writer Or Not?

I don't know what is with some people. I remember some time ago when I started up my UMG space on MySpace, one of the first bulletins I got was someone who was saying that big name writers think people who choose to self-publish are not as good as they are. I told her I used to encounter that same attitude all the time with dog show people. For some reason, people are like that. Things like that lead to stress in a person's life, and that's why I do not go into chat rooms, forums and e-mail groups anymore. I don't need to hang out with people like that just to feel validated as a good breeder. Of course I don't breed anymore, not since Groucho died. But if I did, I still would say the same thing. I prefer to self-publish because I do not like the big-name publisher standards. I have my own way of writing, and thus my own method of publishing. If a publisher accepts my work the way it is, then fine. I'll accept their offer to publish my book. But I don't need them to make me feel validated as an author. These days, anyone can publish a book. I just wish they had self-publishing companies like Lulu when I was a teenager!

It seems to be more about acceptance and snobbiness than anything else. I don't publish my books for those reasons at all. I publish them because I want to get them out into the World. Not for ignorant reasons, but just because people I grew up with (friends or not) all enjoyed my stories, so I think the World should relish in them as well. Believe me, not everyone who liked my stories were my friends!! Even people who were my complete enemies enjoyed them. That's how good they were. And that's being honest. Don't think that it was just friends and family that enjoyed them and I am going by that. That wouldn't really be fair. Friends and family is going to tell a person anything just to be nice. Nevermind that constructive criticism is needed. That's why I most often listened to people who are unbiased when they critique my stories. If I'd had kids, I would have kept my stories here in the family. But since I never did have children, the only thing to do is get these books out into the World.

Well, I was told I need some kind of search engine optimization for my site, because it is not showing up in search engines at all. I thought that by having the listing here on my blog that it would help, and talk about the stories. But it doesn't seem to be working. I just completed scanning and layout of several more stories as well. I want to get them onto the site. I need more cover designs and that is not my department. That's Cathy's doings! She's not like me though, she doesn't work fast because she has 3 kids and a husband she juggles with every day life. Then I still need ISBN numbers!! I haven't got those yet! LOL! Not having any is almost the biggest embarrassment here. But I never needed any until now. I never thought I would be getting these stories out to the World like I'm doing now. I've hit my peak in this venture. Most of the stories coming out now are my own. Between 1997 and 2000, I was having ideas flowing from my mind like water!! I even made my own version of a tribute to Mount St. Helens. Several times over. I'm going to be censoring a little on that story, but Anna surely wants me to put it out. I even made a story about the future of Mount St. Helens. Usually when I wrote a story about Mount St. Helens, I always made sure it was completed before May 18 of any given year. It's a thing that is sort of in my veins. If I start a story about the mountain, it has to be done by the 18th of May. And I have faithfully kept up that tradition. I have several stories about the mountain. One of my favorites (and probably the most heart-warming) is about a chakawati lemur (listed on my Metazoic site as Dyscampturus) mama and cub who live near the mountain in the year 2180--200 years after the 1980 eruption. Yeah, I know that is too soon for an animal that I portray as being After Man, but it helps to have humans in the story as well. For rehabilitation purposes. Well, mama is taken by the eruption and the cub survives and is taken for rehabilitation to a wildlife center. There he meets another young cub, a girl. She's kindof a bully, and she laughs at him because he has his hands and feet all bandaged up. I have an idea for an advertisement film for this story, and I am going to try my luck with a little Hollywood-style animation. It's going to be the best advertisement film I ever made.