There are little victories in publishing a book.

There’s the feeling of triumph when you wake in the middle of the night and flip open your laptop, realizing that you finally figured out how to make that sentence work.

And when you finish the first draft.

And when you’ve perfected the book on it’s second draft, a year later after 6–8 hours a day of one long concentration headache.

And then when you feel the third draft is really getting somewhere.

And when you realize the fourth draft is pretty much done.

And when you finish the fifth draft and are way too exhausted to keep working on it.

And when you finish the sixth draft and the sentences don’t make sense anymore as a story. They’re just problems that you mostly don’t need to fix again.

And when you finish the seventh draft, and you feel like it’s finally, actually, truly done. That you can’t improve on it anymore.

And when when you finish the eighth draft, and it’s all nonsense garbage that you shouldn’t put your name on.

And when you finish the ninth draft, and realize that after three years of working on it non-stop, you’re simply not talented enough to make it better.

And it’s over.

And when you get the rejection letters from agents and publishers, and you realize that you’re going to have to do it yourself, because someone has to read this besides you.

And when your girlfriend reads it, and says that she loves it, and that she now knows you better.

And when your Kickstarter’s successful because both your friends and total strangers believe in you for reasons you can’t fathom.

And when you find just the right cover, after rejecting so many designs.

And when it’s finally professionally designed, edited, formatted, printed and you’re holding it in your hands. After three years of migraines, it’s full of sentences you can no longer fix, and a cover you can no longer improve, and you realize that your book is finished. Then you cry and laugh until your contact lenses fall out as you keep repeating “This was so hard. This was so goddamn hard” alone in your apartment. Because it’s finally, actually, truly over.

And you text the picture of you holding the book to your best friend who read those awful first drafts. And the later ones, which were less bad.

And to your now ex-girlfriend, who still believes in you.

And to your friends who supported you.

And to your family, who think it’s nice.

And when you do your first book event in your home town and your family and people who knew you in High School come out and pack the room to hear you talk.

And when you do your second book event and only two people come out to hear you talk.

And when you do your fifth one, where you reminisce about that time when those two people came.

And when you watch your book bought only once a day on Kindle, when you thought it was going to sell so well. Your idea was so original, the topic so unexplored, the book so decently written, that it should be selling in the thousands. Or at least hundreds. Dozens would be great. And you get horribly depressed.

And when, after months of soul searching on what success really means, you get a fan letter from a stranger.

And when you get others. Telling you that your book made a difference in their lives. That they laughed out loud at parts. That they learned a lot from it. That they loved it.

And when you realize that total strangers are actually reading the words that you worked so hard on, and enjoying them.

And when a British Airlines pilot loves the book and finds you on Twitter, flies into your city, and buys you lunch.

And when you appear on local morning news to talk about your book and promote your author event. The audience laughs and applauds and then later no one shows up to the bookstore. And you sell one copy that day.

And when your ex-girlfriend emails you to say that her mom read the book and cried. That she can relate to it because of her husband’s death. That she loved it. Then you cry a little.

And when you start to marvel every day that someone somehow found out about your book and liked it enough to buy a copy online.

And sometimes it skyrockets to two.

And when you realize that you’ve made at least one total stranger’s world a little bigger, a little weirder, or a little less alone.

And that that’s what so many authors did for you throughout your life.

And that’s why you sat down three years ago to make something you truly believed mattered.

And still do.

And that one day, when you sold a whole seven copies online.

It was a day to remember.

How has your experience been writing or publishing your work? Please let me know in the comments, and post a link to your book.

Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains is available on Amazon HERE