Publishing and Buttons

Switching to self-publishing has had an unexpected and beneficial effect on my attitude about writing.

When I started out, long before self-publishing was an option, I was writing for the sheer pleasure of it, for the happiness it gave me, for the delight in the act itself. I wrote what I liked, and I liked what I wrote.

That changed as soon as I became traditionally published. I started focusing on writing what a commercial publishing house would accept. I became almost obsessed with pushing all the right buttons. It hampered my creativity and it certainly limited the fun. Much of the time, writing wasn't fun at all.

After I switched to self-publishing in 2009, that near-obsession stayed with me for a while, but it started to fade, and then it evaporated entirely. In time, I stopped worrying about those buttons and reverted to writing to please myself again. It's been wonderful, liberating. This attitude isn't likely to result in bestsellers, but it does result in a happy writer.

And so, after all these decades and 29 books out there, I have come full circle. Once again, writing means to me being a man alone in a room happily pushing his own button.

So to speak.