Day Three: Fun At the Library

At long last I find myself in a safe place surrounded by books and therefore slightly more reassured about my life. Yet, after at long last navigating myself to the local library upon completing the two books I brought with me into my isolation (Books Two and Three of A Series of Unfortunate Events, in case you were wondering), I find myself still somewhat empty handed.

Let me first preface this with a small, irrational fear I have… I am very scared of librarians. There is really no reason for it, other than they are very protective of public access to books and I always found myself at the wrong end of their stern gazes. I always much preferred book shops, where no one demands you return your recent love affair with a book to the shelves and not bend the pages. Essentially, i feel that librarians prevent one from really loving a book, from making your mark on the book they it made its mark on you, and then, to add insult to injury, they take it back from you. So, needless to say I was very unhappy today to learn that I am not even allowed to take books off the premises.

“Go ahead, look around until your heart is content… or at least until closing,” she had said. “But you may not check out any books until you have proof of residency.”

So in lieu of heading to the DMV to change my address or voting registration (no thanks), I am instead hiding in a back corner of the library amongst the outdated writing guides and Percy Jackson.

The breakthrough is that, while also serving as the most remote section of the library almost miles away from the children that are screaming in the Teen Section (since when do you not have to be quiet in libraries? Maybe it’s cause my mother was a librarian, but I was always very reverent in the library–and no, let’s not get into the Freudian implications of my mother being a librarian and how that impacts my irrational fear), it’s also got loads of interesting books that I probably should have been reading ages ago. Like there is an entire book of every literary agent and publisher in the country, according to genre even! And on top of that, they have loads of incredible tips about making money with writing and how to send Queries to publishers and even writing calendars.

Tip number one, above all though, seems to be that I should start a blog and a website, so I’m at least feeling half-accomplished with that. Also, number one blogging tip seemed to be that I should make lots of lists and use lots of keywords to make me very searchable (they call this SEO, stupid acronyms.). So here is a list I’ve been thinking about:

Reasons Why I Feel Already Defeated In This Writing Process

1) Money. Isn’t this always the number one excuse for everything? I can write something I care about or I can write and worry about making money. Surely some publisher out there realizes that I would write much better stuff if I didn’t have those stupid greenbacks banging at my door? Surely, someone else can worry about this on my behalf.

2) Overthinking. Looking at books like this is good because they basically outline the entire publishing process as a step-by-step process, but now I can’t help thinking about how I can sell a series when I haven’t even written two chapter. Stop worrying about Book 7, Casey, and let’s start Chapter 1.

3) Competition. Have you guys ever read this Percy Jackson book? It’s very good actually. I know they say to check out books in the market you want to enter, but I can’t help but walk down the aisles in the library and not think about how my book would ever even be found amongst all these series.

4) Work-experience. Why does everyone keep instructing me how to publish all of my novels? Clearly I have not published any novels or I would not be reading this book on how to publish novels. I have no experience, we get it! It’s like those jobs that require 2 years of experience for an entry level job. Surely someone out there is looking for NEW writers?

5) I can’t seem to turn off my cell phone. And I get very sad when I don’t get any texts. I miss people. So sue me.

Ok, I am tired of making this list, but I’m sure there are at least a thousand other great reasons why I feel I can’t do this, but only one good one as to why I can. And that is that I am going to. I am very stubborn.

I’m off to go write my story out as if speaking to a young child like this book just told me to do.

(If anyone is feeling generous with their Amazon Prime, I would very much like a copy of this book. Let me know.)

Also, yesterday’s story has a happy ending. I found my corkscrew! All is well.