A Few Thoughts on Being a Published Author
By: Daniel Fruman
It’s there. Laying on my desk. Just another object amid a clutter of papers, pens, trinkets, and books. Except this one is special. This one has my name on the top and is packed to the brim with words that I spent countless hours, sleepless nights, and lonely days writing. And it doesn’t matter. It’s just another thing cluttering my desk.
Ok, that’s not necessarily the case. I’m not a nihilist, nor am I a completely modest prude, to think so lowly of something that I breathed from forth the ether. However, it’s really starting to lose value. When I first decided I was going to publish a book, I saw it as this incredible milestone – an achievement that will alter my life. I shall be beloved and famed for this deed; I shall be raised to Heaven on the wings of Valkyries. Then, as I clicked “publish,” I didn’t feel it. I didn’t hear the hoofbeats and the war-cries of Wotan’s daughters. I said to myself that it’s just the nerves or the stress, that when I hold the book in my hands… then I will feel that ecstasy I longed for. Then it came in the mail. And I held it in my hands. I flipped through the pages and giggled at some clever lines. And I didn’t hear the hoofbeats and the war-cries of Wotan’s daughters. No, I somehow felt worse than when I hit that “publish” button.
It’s not to say that I was stressed. I wasn’t (I still am not, for letting my soul be dust to all) anxious that people wouldn’t like it or that it wouldn’t cell. It wasn’t as if I found myself reaching the summit of a mountain, only to discover that I got up but a few steps, that the mountain is as tall as Dante’s purgatory. No, it wasn’t all that. I wasn’t overwhelmed or underwhelmed – I just wasn’t happy. But why? I did all I had to. I spend months working non-stop. The last few weeks before the book was out; I lived in the worlds that I created. I wrote like I never wrote before. It was the most exhausting and mentally draining thing that I had ever done. When I began scanning the plays to put them into blank verse (long story), I developed patterns for songs I’d listen to (that 20-minute version of “Misty Mountains” from “The Hobbit” was a real hero), I was like a robot, tapping away an endless pattern of
de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum…
And I loved it all.
When that was gone, when it was finished, I needed rest, I did. But I didn’t. I was on a high that I had never felt, I didn’t need the Valkyries to carry me to Heaven – I was already there. I was doing the thing I love every day until fatigue stayed my hand, and spared the keyboard that had become a slave to my constant tapping. And when I stopped, it wasn’t a weight toppling off my shoulders; it was me toppling down down down to earth like Lucifer from Paradise. The book was a testament to all the things that I have done, but it was the physical manifestation of my deepest fear. I had spent so much time in the murky, candle-lit halls of Ivan the Terrible’s Kremlin; I had wandered the fields of Asgard and Midgard, as the Gods did everything they could to halt the incoming apocalypse; I snuck through the cold, dark corridors of the Tower of London, witnessing a man cope with being King… and it was all gone. The worlds were there, staining the white paper of the book. I could never go back to those worlds – they were preserved there forever, and I, their creator, was locked out.
I should have continued writing, but I haven’t written since. Life caught up to me after a month of fantasies and dreams. I want to continue writing, but I can’t, not yet. The fall from Heaven left me empty of ideas or heart. And solitary as I am, with no muse to inspire me, I remain as I am. Until one day, that spark will come again.
Until that day comes, my book:
“Far More Than Kin, Far Less Than Kind” is available to buy on Amazon, in both Paperback and Kindle formats. Check it out if you wish to explore the worlds that I created and then decorated with my dazed footprints. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08R7GY79P/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_jwJ.FbSKPMHX9
Anyway, those are my thoughts, now that I’m a published author. And for all those who wish to do the same, to publish as I have… Don’t, unless, you wish to join me, Lucifer and every other published author, as one who fell from Paradise… Waiting to ascend again.