You know, I'm feeling inspired again. Inspired again to write.
I'll be the first to admit I've been a little slack in my writing. Writing only a short story per year, for the past five or six years. Most of them aren't even complete. I kept abandoning what I started because I kept second guessing myself. Is this good? Ugh. No, it isn't. I never want to see this piece of crap again. And so I wrote at a glacial pace and only when I felt like it. Until 2014...
2014 was a bit of a strange year for me. Mainly because in a year full of horrible tragedies, so many good things happened to me. Career-wise I was hitting it off. Kids too had finally grown old enough that they stopped trying to commit acts of random suicide every few minutes.
And, in terms of my writing, I had finally gotten round to putting up Zombies Ate My Muslim on Smashwords and Google Play. It was no longer an Amazon exclusive! (Pat on back, Ted.)
Putting it up on Smashwords is a big deal for me because that means it's no longer region exclusive and when a fellow Malaysian asks where one could buy my silly zombie story, I have a place to send them. Plus, Smashwords also pushes the title to other ebook markets such as iTunes, Kobo and B&N so that's great too!
I did not expect Google Play to have any effect though. It was just another place to publish a book and not see any sales. But an odd thing happened. My colleagues, avid Android users that they are, randomly discovered Zombies Ate My Muslim on the Google Play store, and actually left me some good reviews, unsolicited. Naturally, I was psyched! And I knew they had actually read the story because on the very last page I had promised I would deliver another short story. However I never finished writing it. My colleagues asked where the other story was, because that sounded an interesting read too. I had to answer that I never got round to finishing it. Never found the motivation to. They told me they would love to read the next story I wrote.
That got me thinking. Maybe I should start taking writing seriously again.
One recent night, I reopened one of my abandoned crappy stories that I had kept on my computer for years. Despite initially cringing, I was drawn to reading the story till the last word. I had almost forgotten I had even started writing the story at all. But what surprised me was that I liked it. I liked that crappy story. It wasn't so bad after all. I guess I'm not such a bad writer after all?
It was a reaffirmation for myself, that perhaps I can do this writing business after all. That perhaps I don't suck too hard. So now I'm making 2015 the year I take writing seriously once again.
I'm going to write -- and complete -- my short stories. I'm going to write a novel. And I'm going to start resubmitting them to publications again. This is exciting.
I'll be the first to admit I've been a little slack in my writing. Writing only a short story per year, for the past five or six years. Most of them aren't even complete. I kept abandoning what I started because I kept second guessing myself. Is this good? Ugh. No, it isn't. I never want to see this piece of crap again. And so I wrote at a glacial pace and only when I felt like it. Until 2014...
2014 was a bit of a strange year for me. Mainly because in a year full of horrible tragedies, so many good things happened to me. Career-wise I was hitting it off. Kids too had finally grown old enough that they stopped trying to commit acts of random suicide every few minutes.
And, in terms of my writing, I had finally gotten round to putting up Zombies Ate My Muslim on Smashwords and Google Play. It was no longer an Amazon exclusive! (Pat on back, Ted.)
Putting it up on Smashwords is a big deal for me because that means it's no longer region exclusive and when a fellow Malaysian asks where one could buy my silly zombie story, I have a place to send them. Plus, Smashwords also pushes the title to other ebook markets such as iTunes, Kobo and B&N so that's great too!
I did not expect Google Play to have any effect though. It was just another place to publish a book and not see any sales. But an odd thing happened. My colleagues, avid Android users that they are, randomly discovered Zombies Ate My Muslim on the Google Play store, and actually left me some good reviews, unsolicited. Naturally, I was psyched! And I knew they had actually read the story because on the very last page I had promised I would deliver another short story. However I never finished writing it. My colleagues asked where the other story was, because that sounded an interesting read too. I had to answer that I never got round to finishing it. Never found the motivation to. They told me they would love to read the next story I wrote.
That got me thinking. Maybe I should start taking writing seriously again.
One recent night, I reopened one of my abandoned crappy stories that I had kept on my computer for years. Despite initially cringing, I was drawn to reading the story till the last word. I had almost forgotten I had even started writing the story at all. But what surprised me was that I liked it. I liked that crappy story. It wasn't so bad after all. I guess I'm not such a bad writer after all?
It was a reaffirmation for myself, that perhaps I can do this writing business after all. That perhaps I don't suck too hard. So now I'm making 2015 the year I take writing seriously once again.
I'm going to write -- and complete -- my short stories. I'm going to write a novel. And I'm going to start resubmitting them to publications again. This is exciting.
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