Confessions of an Indie Author: I Know What I’m Doing (or: “What in the goddamn hell do I need parentheses for?”)
I was supposed to be a teenage authoring sensation – did you know that?
It’s true. I had it all planned out.
My manuscript, written on a laptop that could have easily doubled as a weapon (that thing was H E A V Y) was sitting pretty at 10.5k words. To thirteen-year-old me, that was akin to the length of the Bible or Shantaram. I’d call up Harper Collins, let them know I’ve got their next big hit, and Bob’s ya uncle, I’ll be rich, famous and flying to LA for the movie adaptation.
I’d seen another teenager do just that. Alexandra Adornetto had become published. Christopher Paolini, too, I later found out. If they could, why couldn’t I?
Of course, in those days, I didn’t know editing from my armpit, and I took constructive criticism about as well as an arrow to the head. There was no telling me that what I’d written ought to never see the light of day – shouldn’t, in fact, even be used as makeshift toilet paper. I’d poured my blood, sweat and tears into those ten-thousand words, what do you meant they’re utter dog shit?
Confidence, I lacked not – so much so, that I even told my English teacher I’d have a publishing deal any day now.
“Want a second pair of eyes to go over it?” she’d offered. “It couldn’t hurt to fine tune before sending it off to publishers.”
I politely declined. She knew my work. I got good marks in class. A publisher would see just that.
And if all went to hell, I even had a backup plan. I could offer up Tragic Backstory ™ which, spoiler, is in all actual fact, somewhat tragic. Maybe I’ll share that one day but the day for personal growth is not today. Either way, to thirteen-year-old me, Tragic Backstory ™ would seal the deal because who wouldn’t want to:
A. Take sympathy and give me what I want.
B. Publish my novel and susequently make a deal for an autobiography detailing my thirteen short years.
C. Understand that I’m a goddamn gift because I haven’t live, laughed, toaster-bathed myself yet.
Of course, this grand plan of mine came to a grinding, screeching halt when I discovered one major flaw in my plan: the only way to get my precious, most likely prize-winning novel off the old laptop, was to put it on a relic of times gone by.
A floppy disk.
I’m a baby of the nineties, I know full well what a floppy disk is. I remember dissecting one at my Grandi’s once, fascinated by its innards and equally confused how it could hold any information at all (I am still similarly confused by technology now, at the age of thirty-two). At this point, being thirteen with the Great Australian Novel in my hands, I came to the realisation that over time, technology becomes obsolete. Could I have found a floppy disk if I tried? Most likely. People like to hoard things. I’m sure a brand-new floppy was out there somewhere just waiting for me to nab.
But then came another, secondary issue: pride.
“I know what I’m doing.”
I can’t begin to describe just how many times I said, thought or wrote those words growing up. In all things, I was confident – delusionally so – that I knew what I was doing at any given moment. It had been the reason I’d declined help from my English teacher. Also, the reason why I had several sets of crooked bangs until I reached an age where I learned that hairdressers exist for a reason (spoiler, that was only a few years ago, I’m a slow learner, it would seem).
And because I knew what I was doing, I closed that old laptop and never again looked at that manuscript.
Heartbreaking.
Three years passed and I was being homeschooled, no longer attending my fancy private Christian high school. I was my own English teacher. Maths teacher, too, which explains a god-awful lot about my budgeting skills. My mother bought curriculum that I promptly snatched up, thinking those five fateful words.
Truth be told, I didn’t do half bad. I did the work. I did it well.
And then I realised something wonderful about my change of circumstances:
Homeschooling is flexible.
At this point, our family had a Mac desktop. Naturally, in a big family, time was limited to use said computer. But I made every minute count and within three months, I’d produced a completed young adult novel. It was a behemoth, sitting pretty at two-hundred-twenty-thousand words. I shudder to think of the size now when indie author me hasn’t written anything longer than one-hundred-fifty thousand words.
Yet, I was confident publishers would see my work and understand that such sweeping story telling could only be done with such a blown-out word count.
Being sixteen at this point, I understood the process a little better. I couldn’t simply approach a publisher. No. I needed an agent.
I googled. I plucked the first name that came up.
After a quick journey to Officeworks to print out the first fifty pages (while incredibly paranoid one of the print station workers would steal my precious intellectual property) and a hastily written cover letter which could be summarised with the phrase “please publish me,” I popped my parcel in the post box and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And…you guessed it…waited.
Nine weeks went by before I peered out my bedroom window to see a fat parcel poking out of our letterbox.
My time had come.
Probably contracts. Lots of them. Publishing deal, movie rights, hell – musical rights, too, because as a theatre nerd, having my YA novel turned into a Broadway spectacle would have been better than a filthy Tim-Tam slam (and my fellow Aussies know how sinfully good those bad boys are).
I was tearing open the parcel with my name within a heartbeat.
But…that was my handwriting on the front. Mine. My name and address written with my careful scrawl. Not the hasty script of an agent desperate to land new talent.
Then, it dawned on me.
You see, the agent I’d submitted to had instructed to include a self-addressed envelope – postage paid – if I wanted my manuscript returned to me. I pulled out my fifty pages, sans cover letter which was most likely sitting in a bin somewhere, and found that a note had been tacked to the front of my novel.
Sorry, you’ve been unsuccessful…we hope your work finds a home…thanks for submitting…
It was a slip of paper, mass printed, with a printed signature to boot.
But underneath it, a handwritten note:
“Have you considered using parentheses? You’re using too many dashes.”
Disheartened (and a little pissed off because clearly this agent didn’t know what she was missing out on) I slammed my manuscript onto my bedside table and grumbled, “What in the goddamn hell do I need parentheses for?”
Time passed. I finished school, I worked, I moved out of home.
All the while, I kept writing.
I went to a writing course. I met a boy. He wrote, too. I edited his work and questioned, again, the need for parentheses here and there (he certainly seemed very fond of them).
I kept writing.
Boy and I married. Boy and I made babies.
I kept writing.
And then, in early 2020, Covid hit. I was a tired mum of three (I’m still that, ain’t I?). My oldest was in his final year of preschool. We stayed home. My babies, four, two and newborn, slept for hours at a time. I had never been so caught up on housework in my life with nowhere to go. I was so desperate for something to do, I even exercised.
“Why don’t you write?”
My husband, my biggest cheerleader (regrettably sans pom-poms) had been pushing for me to write. And write some more. Just as I used to. It was the first thing we’d bonded over and the two of us had had many dates where we simply wrote side by side. Except, life is a funny thing. It happened. I found myself struggling to string two words together, never mind two creative thoughts. When my youngest was six months old, that old Tragic Backstory ™ stepped in and I found myself diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A psychiatrist placed me on medication.
And the funniest thing happened.
My head cleared. I found myself able to think for the first time in forever. Summer 2020/21 was one of my best on record. I hit my stride as a mother and wife (better late than never – three children deep and six years in).
For the first time in a long time, I let myself consider the possibilities.
And I wrote.
That novel became Daughter of Ashes, my first indie novel, published 14th November, 2021. Funnily enough, it was a much more fleshed out version of those ten thousand words I’d written at thirteen. It was a story I had to tell, lest I be haunted by teenage me for all eternity. Now, it should come as no surprise to you that yours truly has some control issues. With the level of control afforded to indie authors (and a singular disappointing experience with an agent), I hit “publish” on Amazon’s KDP program.
At this point, only one other set of eyes had seen my work. Most people didn’t even know I was doing anything beyond keeping my kids alive, but my husband knew about the book. With great apprehension and an all-consuming desire to throw up, I let him read DOA.
Notice I said “read.”
Those good old five words came up again in various ways.
Should you change this sentence?
I know what I’m doing.
Should this character be doing that?
I know what I’m doing.
Should-
I.Know.What.I’m.Doing.
I can count on both manicured hands how many corrections I allowed my husband to offer. Most were put in because I thought, “Well, they’re tiny corrections, why not?”
That book didn’t do well.
Neither did the sequel.
And the third book in the trilogy? It never left my computer. Still hasn’t.
All through this, I was going to therapy thanks to Tragic Backstory ™. I can’t say exactly how much therapy helped where that’s concerned because I spent the majority of my time talking about writing. My lovely therapist, whose name I honestly can’t remember, said something that to this day, I think of regularly.
“You’re independent because you had to be. You think you know what you’re doing because you didn’t allow the possibility of failure – in your mind, you had no choice but to believe you knew it all. It’s okay not to know. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to take help when it’s offered.”
Naturally, she was trying to direct things back to Tragic Backstory ™ but I couldn’t help but relate what she said to my writing.
Nowadays, I’m happy to say I know what I’m doing.
Nowadays, I don’t know what I’m doing.
And that’s okay.
Can I market or advertise effectively? No.
Can I edit my own work effectively? No.
Can I – NO.
I can’t do it all. I don’t have to think it’s all on my shoulders anymore. I’m still an indie author, now with four books (if you include those first two that really ought to be locked away for crimes against literature). I take the help where I can. I ask questions. I don’t pretend to know it all because the reality is, there’s far too much to know, so how can I possibly hope to know everything?
I still write.
And even if I never get an agent to accept my work, I will continue to write.
That’s the one thing I do know.
___________________
Sunday, 1st June, 2025
