Tragedy in my writing career brought thirty years of future experiences of both success and failure.
Tragedy shackled every fiber of my existence. Responsibility made the circumstance I was forced into overwhelmingly grave. Despondence and feelings of guilt were emotionally crippling. Deep dark depression seemed to spill out from dark regions of my emotions. Everything bad that can rain down on a person seemed to come to me in gigantic waves of trauma when my wife of ten years died, while I was away from our home driving an over-the-road heavy truck. From the time a man knocked on the motel door to tell me she died, through the funeral and burial, I was an emotional wreck.
I had nine Arabian horses on a farm that belong to the mother of my now deceased wife. Without help with the horses for more than a year, needing to do what my wife normally did and generate the usual compensation for driving left me utterly lost. The horses were all I had left. Two weeks without being able to work went by when a friend came to the house to tell me a paving company in a nearby town needed truck drivers. I applied and went to work before the ink was dry on the application and without the required physical. Driving a dump truck with hot asphalt was a new and difficult experience. It lasted seven weeks and at the end I was issued two checks, one for the two previous weeks of driving and two weeks of severance pay.
Three days later a woman came to the farm to buy an eight month old stallion. With the means to live and care for the horses for ten months. I purchased a word processor and my writing experience began to take shape.
The work I did on the word processor could be saved on a three point five floppy disc, but it had no internal memory. I was taught the reason to save my work in fifteen minute intervals when the electricity in the house suddenly stopped flowing and what I wrote that entire day was gone.
When the wife of a friend asked to help with the horses, I agreed and told her to water and feed them. I was not totally clear in telling about her responsibilities being limited to feeding and watering, once each day.
As I came to various solutions to overcome the tragedy of my writing, I renewed my contract with a freight contractor to haul customers freight in a dry van trailer with my truck. Two weeks later I returned to the farm and learned she had a total of fourteen eight hour days on a written list and she expected to be paid for the total hours. I expected to pay her for the two hours she should have done each day. I gave her cash for twenty-eight hours and she left, after she told me what she considered to be wrong with my earlier parental guidance. Her son, standing in the bed of a pickup, bashed my roadside mailbox that night, while I fed a stallion in a pasture across the county road from my house. I shouted a few choice words at him and the driver.
The solutions to the tragedy of my writing career dissolved at that point. I was back to having nobody to care for the horses and could not leave them to drive the truck. I sold the horses, the truck, the house and land, went to visit an old friend and found an small apartment. With my total focus on writing full time, I quickly learned how a small amount of inspiration dwindles to no inspiration without enjoyable distractions.
A new older model truck became my new home and a laptop computer purchased from a pawn shop became my new writing journey. I did a heap of driving and little writing for more than two years, consequently the first endeavor was a success more than four years after it began. I paid too much to have the book edited, published on the leading distributor of digital books and waited for the bucks to roll in from the massive amounts of sales I hoped to have. Duh! Nothing! I bought gift certificates to have reviews and still nothing. Months went by before a single purchase was made. A few days later another purchase and then nothing for eight months. Three purchases brought high hopes. One or two purchases per week were normal. I had not solved my tragedy of my writing career.
Learning about Smashwords helped to counter the tragedy in my writing career. I published three digital books and continued writing and publishing without more than nominal monthly sales. I watched tons of podcasts that were done by people who were basically giving a bit of information to sell an expensive course and left me naming the sham as being tragedy, disaster, calamity, catastrophe, but most was misfortune. Reality bites.
I made a huge investment in a course and had some success, but most people who sent email addresses wanted a physical book, which I did not offer due to expense of printing and shipping. I took orders without requiring payment until the paperback books were available for mailing. Most of those who promised to purchase and pay for shipping did not return my emails, leaving me with books and no customers. I still offered both digital books and physical books, with the thought that the accumulated stashes will someday find a new home. Find Mutual Transitions at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/501420 Wealthy kidnapped victim Wilson Crammer Buzzard Shields South: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/812276
Every new day brings the promise of a new project. Update. 2022 was another productive year with five new publications. Buzzard Shields America : https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/840300 Rafe Coleman Federal Marshal Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1126804 Buzzard Shields North https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/897908 Gold production, Airplanes Best Of Luck https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1144008 Doctor Samuel Harkness returns South Of The River https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1176583