Recently, I had a chat with a fellow author. She was tired. Really tired. Just like me, she has a full time day job, young children, and is struggling to fulfill her authoring ambitions while trying to balance every other responsibility in life.

We talked about the fight for every sale, the difficulty of marketing in today’s overwhelming social media-driven world, and how we are both just too tired and awkward to make proper use of TikTok. 

See, authoring’s kind of like that song from Annie. Writing books is only the beginning. But after it’s done, authors cannot simply throw their books out to sea and let it sink like a stone. There’s ongoing work trying to gain visibility, to find readers, and earn those coveted reviews one at a time. We get tricked by vanity publishers, kicked by critical reviewers, and there’s always lots of temptations to throw in the towel, all while dreaming of a rich benefactor would descend upon us and make it all easier.

At the end of the griping, we each poured a drink and toasted to our mutual misery, silently acknowledging that we’ll be back to it the next day, nose to the grindstone as always.

Because you see, we love what we do. No matter how hard it gets, we will keep on. No matter how long the marathon lasts, we’ll continue running. 

And hey, the sun might come out tomorrow.