I thought about approaching publishing companies about Z\u014dsan and Tamaishi. I still debate about this internally \u2014 the idea that you’re not a “real” writer until you get to that point. Before that, it’s just a hobby. It’s not serious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even before I read my friend Diana’s take on this subject,<\/a> I realized why I do this: it’s not that<\/em> serious. It’s about enjoying the process, not deadlines, contracts and paychecks. I don’t condemn anyone who wants to make a living writing; I just gather it entails compromises to my creative process, family life (among other things) that I’m not willing to make. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Self publishing is not a “shortcut”, or simply a means to bypass the traditional publishing world. That world is just not what I want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alas, publishing is not free. Hence the Kickstarter: I turn to my prospective readers to offset the costs beforehand, rather than try and recoup it all after the fact. While I agree that would be a highly rational business-minded approach, that’s not how I’m wired. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I considering a blessing that I’m able to this at all. And a blessing from all of you, my readers and backers, that believe in what I’m creating. I am grateful that you have helped me bring my creative work to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t believe at all that someday I’ll be a “real” writer by doing anything different. I may not ever make a living doing this, but I’m definitely a writer, and more importantly, I’m happy with what I’m doing. Judging by the waves of support that come in through Kickstarter, I gather that others are happy with what I’m doing too \u2014 and I couldn’t ask for more than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thought about approaching publishing companies about Z\u014dsan and Tamaishi. I still debate about this internally \u2014 the idea that you’re not a “real” writer until you get to that point. Before that, it’s just a hobby. It’s not serious. Even before I read my friend Diana’s take on this subject, I realized why I do … Continue reading Why not an agent or publisher? Or\u2026 when do you get to a be a real boy?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paUyBu-45e","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}