Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

If it’s important you’ll find a way. If it’s not, you’ll find an excuse. Ryan Blair

Yesterday I got an email from Amazon telling me that “Secrets and Silence” is now published in paperback. In Canada, we can’t get a proof before publishing. We have to wait until we have published and then purchase an author’s copy to see what it actually looks like in print. My husband purchased a copy and it should be arriving on September 5^th-8^th. I can’t wait to hold a copy in my hand.

To be honest, I thought being published would feel different. There is a feeling of emptiness in releasing our work out into the world we might not expect. It is not ours anymore; we are not still crafting, editing, tweaking, and polishing. It is not still full of possibilities, it is what it is. It is done and all the time we spent tweaking, editing, and polishing we need to put into another project, our families, or something.

My two younger sisters and I have a pact that we will each publish a book next September. It is time to make things happen. Now that I realize how user-friendly publishing on Amazon is, and that an Indy author can be just that. We don’t have to pay other people to format it for Amazon Kindle Publishing, the tools provided are easy to work with.

There are many companies willing to work with authors to help them publish their work. If you have been wondering if you can publish your novel, children’s book, or cookbook, etc. without them you absolutely can. If we do it ourselves as Indy authors the quality control of our work falls squarely on our own shoulders. The point I’m making is it can be done and the publishing part on Amazon was not difficult. I was very intimidated by it, but in the end, it was very straight forward. I followed the formatting guidelines and used kindle create to produce the interior of my novel then uploaded it to Kindle. They even have a cover creator tool which I didn’t use.

A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness. It is an expression of humility. It is a foundation for the development of such virtues as prayer, faith, courage, contentment, happiness, love, and well-being. James E. Faust

In case you are like me, worried about this step in the process, don’t be. We need to write the best book we can and find people we respect to help us edit it. We can use Pro-writer as an editing tool, publish as an Indy author if we want, or look for a traditional publisher. Writing our book is the hard part, getting the words right, saying what we want to say eloquently, succinctly, and compellingly. Producing a good read is not about publishing.

Becoming a published author is just like any other accomplishment. We then must look around for our next project, challenge, or goal. I have already started on my next project and I am so happy to have the next project to start. If I didn’t know what my next project would be I think I would feel lost and adrift.

We may wonder how prolific authors write so many books. They finish one and start another and they keep doing that until their library of work is impressive. They say we often overestimate what we can do in one year, but we underestimate what we can do in ten years.

The life we are building is our own and we have more control over what we want that life to be than we often think we do. Twenty-four golden hours each day is what we have to work with, and what we do with it, is up to us. Is it true, we can if we think we can?