{"id":1712,"date":"2013-12-29T19:47:18","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T03:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2013-12-29T19:49:42","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T03:49:42","slug":"end-of-the-year-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/?p=1712","title":{"rendered":"End of the Year Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

10 years ago,<\/strong> I was working at Burger King (a really, really crappy Burger King where the fries were cold and the pop was uncarbonated, or at least the flavors anybody cared about were–it shut down just after New Year’s that year) and thinking I was really close to finding an agent and getting published. \u00c2\u00a0LOL. \u00c2\u00a0(I was nowhere<\/em> near it.) \u00c2\u00a0At some point that fall, I’d gotten a slightly personalized rejection letter from an agent whose name I can’t even remember now. \u00c2\u00a0Looking back, it was obviously a form letter, but it had my name on it and was on the agency letterhead. \u00c2\u00a0Slightly thicker paper, cream colored. \u00c2\u00a0Not the thin, run-of-the-mill printer paper rejections I’d been getting. \u00c2\u00a0It basically said I wasn’t ready yet, but that they’d like to see my work again after I’d written another book or three. \u00c2\u00a0I was querying my 4th book at the time, if I remember right.<\/p>\n

5 years ago,<\/strong> I was working at the ribbon shop (I made award ribbons, mostly for cat shows) and was actually on the verge of getting a publishing contract for the first time. \u00c2\u00a0That was\u00c2\u00a0The Rise of Renegade X<\/em>, and it was my 8th or 9th book, depending on how you count them. (The book I’d started before it I would later finish, so technically RRX was my 8th finished book, but if you lined them up in chronological order, it would be the 9th.) \u00c2\u00a0I’d finished it about a year and a half before that, had recently fired my first agent, and was getting interest from a publisher on my own. \u00c2\u00a0In the next few months, I’d have a new, way better agent, and two offers.<\/p>\n

If you’d told me 10 years ago that it would be another 5 years before I got published, I would have been devastated. \u00c2\u00a0If you’d told me 5 years ago that at the end of 2013, I still wouldn’t have gotten another publishing contract, again, I would have been devastated. \u00c2\u00a0Probably even more devastated than the first one, because at least then something good was coming, I just had to wait for it. \u00c2\u00a0(Or work really hard for it. \u00c2\u00a0Whatever.) \u00c2\u00a0And if you added on the fact that I wasn’t just contractless, but self-publishing<\/em>–and, okay, not just self-publishing, but republishing my only traditionally published book because it had gone out of print and I’d taken the rights back–I would have been more than devastated. \u00c2\u00a0Probably absolutely crushed.<\/p>\n

I would have had no idea how happy I was going to be.<\/em><\/p>\n

To be fair, self-publishing has changed a lot in the past 5 years. \u00c2\u00a0But, from where I sit now, \u00c2\u00a0it seems ridiculous to me how upset I would have been about the supposed “failures” to come. \u00c2\u00a0It’s funny how our expectations of how things “should” go can get in the way of seeing opportunities. \u00c2\u00a02013 has been my best year in publishing, period. \u00c2\u00a0Not that there weren’t exciting moments along my traditional publishing journey, and everything I learned along that journey made me a better writer and publisher. \u00c2\u00a0But it wasn’t the only way to be happy, and it certainly wasn’t the only way to be successful.<\/p>\n

This year, I got to write what I wanted. \u00c2\u00a0Which means Renegade X fans (and me) finally got to have a sequel. \u00c2\u00a0This year, I didn’t second guess what editors might<\/em> buy from me or base what I wrote on what I might<\/em> be able to sell to them. \u00c2\u00a0I wrote for myself, and for my readers. \u00c2\u00a0I had more fun writing than I have in a long time (though at least part of that has to do with getting better thyroid meds and not feeling like I was dying all the time, but that’s a different story), I ran a successful kickstarter campaign, and I published two books, which, in the past three months that they’ve been out, have sold more copies than I ever<\/em> did as a traditionally published author. \u00c2\u00a0In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’ve sold more copies of\u00c2\u00a0The Rise of Renegade X <\/em>in the past 3 months\u00c2\u00a0than my publisher did in the past 3 years.<\/p>\n

So, yeah. \u00c2\u00a0I guess the point of this post is that we don’t always know what will make us happy. \u00c2\u00a0I always knew I wanted a career writing books. \u00c2\u00a0That hasn’t changed, and it’s just as satisfying as I’d thought it would be. \u00c2\u00a0But how I got here, to a point where I even feel comfortable saying I have a writing “career” as opposed to just “a book,” was completely unexpected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 years ago, I was working at Burger King (a really, really crappy Burger King where the fries were cold and the pop was uncarbonated, or at least the flavors anybody cared about were–it shut down just after New Year’s that year) and thinking I was really close to finding an agent and getting published. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,6],"tags":[25,26],"class_list":["post-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily_life","category-publishing","category-writing","tag-renegade-x","tag-self-publishing"],"views":204,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}