A Life in Words

I’m Having A Huge Crisis of Confidence

~ ChanAtkins ~ 6 Comments

But I am determined to get through this…

Image by Jakub Kopczyński from Pixabay

A few weeks ago I wrote here and on Substack about suffering writers block for the first time in my life. I was able to recognise the signs and the symptoms I’ve spent the last decade helping my students through. As a creative writing tutor, dealing with other people’s writers block has been extremely common. I had all the classic signs and was procrastinating like hell. I was even starting to dread my evening’s writing – something that is not like me at all.

I was scrolling through my phone, opening up new tabs on my laptop and scrolling through various feeds. I was ‘checking’ things like emails and my bank account, when I really didn’t need to. In short, I was putting off writing. And when I did open up that blank page, whether it’s here on my blog, a new story on Medium or a new post on Substack, I was faltering. Hesitating. I was finding it hard.

There were a few reasons for this and I did manage to get through it. I even managed to push through and finish my current work-in-progress, which was the Black Hare Valley diary style companion book.

But the feeling of being disconnected to writing has not gone away and in all honesty, it is making me feel sick. So I decided to come here and be honest about it. This blog was the very first thing I shared my writing on. Way before I published any books, and a whole decade before I discovered things like Medium and Substack, I was just here. Writing about writing, writing about life. Just writing.

If I am going to be really honest about this situation, then I have to face some uncomfortable truths, and facing those would be easier if I thought I had a solution, a way forward. The thing is, I don’t. Except for to keep trying…

The truth is I am having a huge crisis of confidence when it comes to writing. I am doubting myself like never before. I am getting ideas that I fail to follow through on. I am starting stories, poems and essays and not finishing them. I am reading and editing current WIPs and hating every word. I am feeling like an imposter, all these years later. If I am really, really honest, I am feeling like a loser. A failure.

I don’t want to harp on about why. I have covered this in other posts. I think the main issue is that all these years and books later, I am still no further along, at least not in sales and reviews. I know, I know, I shouldn’t fixate on them. I love writing and would do it anyway. I know that success can be measured in other ways, such as my writing improving, or just the amount of work I have produced.

But I don’t know. It doesn’t feel enough. I am a few years away from turning fifty and I cannot help feeling left behind somehow… Unimportant.

I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me or to offer advice, by the way. I am just returning to this blog in the manner in which it started. Me, offloading my thoughts and feelings. Me, trying to figure things out. It helped back then so I am hoping it will help now.

Two weeks ago I blogged about building an author platform and whether you should scrap it and start again if it’s not working. I guess this post is related to that question. Last week I blogged about whether I should serialise my WIP on here, Substack or Medium. I kind of want to but I am scared.

The reasons to do it come from the author platform query. If it’s not working, try something new. Is it time, for example, that I did try a new approach? Maybe offering my writing for free will bring in new readers, who will then go on to purchase my other books. Maybe it is worth a try,

But my biggest fear is still no one reading it…

I can’t imagine how horrible that would feel after everything.

Things continue to be a shitshow over on Medium. If my earnings go any lower, I will need to rethink my membership. Just months ago I was making hundreds every month and it gave me such a confidence boost! I felt like a real writer! I even saw an uptick in my book sales.

Now I feel like I am questioning everything I do. I guess I need a confidence boost from somewhere and serialising my WIP and offering it for free could be the way to do it…

Or it could backfire horribly…

Still, I suppose that is the worst that can happen and if it did? I would have something to blog about for a while!

Let me know what you think in the comments. Could giving work away like this bring in new readers and give me the boost of interest I need right now? Or could it make things worse?

Should I Serialise My Work-In-Progress?

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

A fun way to gain new readers or a huge piracy risk?

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I’ve been feeling the urge for a while now to serialise my work-in-progress. I’m not sure which one. Perhaps Black Hare Valley Book 1 – testing the waters before it’s eventual release. Or perhaps a book I’ve not written yet – in other words, I’ll write a chapter each week and share it’s progress as it happens.

I’m not sure where this urge came from other than the fact I’ve seen other authors doing this and thought it looked fun. It could potentially be a cool way to gain interest and new readers. It could bring me some useful feedback too. It would be a nice incentive to write. And, I’ve sort of done it before.

If you’ve followed my blog from it’s very early days you’ll remember me sharing The Boy With The Thorn In Its Side chapter by chapter, way, way before it was published. This blog was the first part of my author platform to exist and sharing my work back then was scary but exciting! Nothing bad came of doing that either. In fact, I got regular supportive comments and those early readers gave me the confidence to keep going. I also wrote The Tree Of Rebels straight onto Wattpad, sharing a chapter a week until it was written. The final book I released was a more polished version.

These days though, I worry more about the risks of posting a future book like this. I recently found out that one of my books has been illegally pirated onto the LibGen site. This is the site Meta has been scraping books without the author’s permission, and without any payment to the author, to use the data to train its AI models. There is a court battle on the horizon that will affect us all.

My books being pirated and illegally downloaded is horrible enough, but the thought of a book not yet published being stolen in this way worries me more. I guess it didn’t worry me so much back in the day because I was just starting out. I wasn’t even sure I would ever publish anything at that point.

But now… I’d feel sick if I shared a work-in-progress only to have it stolen by someone else.

I guess I’m writing this to ask if anyone has any advice? I’d like to know if readers would be interested in this sort of thing. Would you like to receive a chapter a week as a book is being written? Would you prefer something like that to be free? Or do you think it’s something I should only offer to paid subscribers? Does anyone know how best I could protect the work against theft?

And finally, if I did do it, what would you be more interested in? Black Hare Valley which is written but not ready for release…. Or something brand new, something I write on the go, just for you?

Let me know!

Building An Author Platform: If It’s Not Working, Should We Scrap It and Start Again?

~ ChanAtkins ~ 6 Comments

Coming to terms with what works and what doesn’t.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

If only I knew where my sales came from.

Sometimes I know – a reader might comment that they’ve just bought my book, and if they’re commenting on Facebook, I’ll probably assume that Facebook is where they discovered my book. Sometimes other authors will buy one of my books after getting to know me. But mostly I have no clue how my books were discovered.

Of course my dashboards on KDP and Draft 2 Digital show me how many units have been sold via various platforms, but how those readers found me and my books is a mystery.

I wrote last week about how Medium boosted my confidence as a paid writer, only to take it away again when things changed there, and this week I want to continue to be honest with you.

My author platform is not working.

You might wonder how I know this. Well, it’s fairly simple to figure out. I get sales for my books and I don’t know how those readers found me, but that’s just one way to look at the facts. The other fact is this: likes and follows do not translate to sales. Let’s take Facebook as an example.

On Facebook I have 1,400 followers roughly. In theory, that should be 1,400 people who are following my page because they are interested in me and my books. But that cannot be true, because the figures do not add up. Every time I post about a new book, the same names pop up to comment and congratulate, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same lovely handful of loyal readers that go on to buy the book and leave a review.

What I am forcing myself to consider now is this: why are all those other people following my page if they don’t want to read my books? Is it a false audience? Is it a waste of my time? Would my time be better spent building up another audience elsewhere, as annoying as that is to consider?

In theory, every time I release a book, a fair chunk of those 1,400 followers should buy it and leave a review. But I know they don’t because my sales and reviews do not show this. So, why are they there? Why are they following? Is it to be supportive? They like me enough to follow what I post but not enough to try my books? Is it a like for like thing? Did they like my page hoping I would like theirs, for example? Or is it that Facebook has reduced my visibility so much that most of those 1,400 people are never shown my posts so have no idea when I have a new book out?

I suspect all of the above is true and it leaves me with a dilemma.

Do I rip it up and start over? Do I quit Facebook because it is not working for me? Do I pour more efforts into other platforms that might give me better visibility?

My concern is that the same thing would happen again. I do wish we lived in a world where people only followed accounts they are actually interested in. I would rather have 40 likes on my author page and 40 regular loyal readers, than 1,400 people who give me false hope every time I post about my books.

Building an author platform is something else they tell you to do when you start as an indie. It’s something I have always embraced, understood and worked hard at. I’ve even run workshops on how to start building one.

It used to work better – that’s for sure.

So, what is the answer? Keep adding more social media accounts in the hope that somehow it might bring you the readers you desire? Or quit the ones that are giving me a false audience? I am sticking with Medium in the hopes my visibility there returns to what it was – and I am enjoying posting on Substack and BlueSky. I prefer these three to Facebook and Instagram so I am tempted to slowly replace them. But I do wonder if the same thing will happen again.

Should I care? Should it matter? I can’t help feeling frustrated by it.

Let me know what your thoughts are! If you’re an author, have you ever found your follows results in sales? If you’re a reader, do you follow authors you don’t read and if so, why?

Medium Gave Me What 12 Years of Publishing and 23 Books Couldn’t

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

And then it took it away again…

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

It’s coming up two years since I joined the writing platform Medium. For years, various author friends had mentioned it, enthused about it and encouraged me to join, but I resisted because I didn’t think I had the time. Almost two years ago a writer friend messaged me again after reading one of my blogs and finally persuaded me to join Medium by asserting that my blog topics and style were just the sort of thing that did well on Medium.

I gave in and joined and I quickly discovered he was right! Once I had joined the Partner Programme and was eligible to earn from my essays, articles, stories and poems, I found the boosts, the positive comments and the money came flowing in.

I was overjoyed. I felt validated. I felt like a real writer.

You’d think that after 12 years of publishing and 23 books released, I’d feel like a real writer, but the truth is, I don’t. Not much has changed for me during those 12 years. I have never had the spare money to throw at advertising my books, but I have done everything they tell you to do to get your books noticed. One of the main pieces of advice I recall reading at the time, was to get on with writing the next book, because once you have more books out there, it all gets easier.

I have never found that to be true. From the moment I published The Mess of Me in 2013, to the moment I released its sequel The Mess Of Us in 2025, I have made a few sales a month. Yes, some months are better than others, and I have never, ever had a month without sales. I am told that for an indie author with no advertising budget, that is not too shabby. And I do agree – with the billions of other books to compete with out there and the social media algorithms wanting you to pay to be seen, it is extremely hard to get sales and make it.

A few years back I reached out to some successful indie authors to ask what their secret was. The answer was not surprising – money. These authors were able to spend hundreds of pounds marketing their books at the start and now they don’t have to. They’ve made a name for themselves, and gained a loyal following.

I am constantly shouting into the abyss, despite how hard I work, despite how many books I write and publish, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews and a handful of awards… I cannot do any better. I am stuck right where I was at the start.

So, although I am still as addicted to writing as ever, and I will never stop as long as I have these ideas in my head, I am honestly hard-pressed to feel like a real writer most days. It doesn’t help that my close family and friends don’t give a shit and refuse to do the one thing they could do to support me in my life.

You can imagine how elated I felt when Medium started rewarding me so quickly. I was so happy! People were reading and commenting on my work. I was getting boosted regularly. Somehow, I was doing it right! And I was getting paid! I was making extra money, more than I had dreamed of to be honest. It made a massive difference to our finances and I even started thinking about putting some away and using it to better market my books.

Then in January, everything changed.

No one knows why and as far as I can tell, the answers are still not terribly forthcoming. Views, reads and earnings plummeted. At the same time, AI slop, bots, scammers and spammers were going through the roof and basically ruining it for everyone. Some say the drop in earnings is a reflection of Medium getting to grips with all that… But I don’t know.

I wasn’t too bad off in January because I’d been boosted a few times in December. January was awful. I barely made anything, and February was even worse. No boosts – which is a shame but not the be all and end all. I once made $15 on a short story that wasn’t boosted. It would take me a long time to make $15 from my books. No kidding.

By the time March arrived I felt like giving up. Millions of writers had jumped ship to Substack and I did the same, though I kept my Medium account. I still posted in February, but not as much. I suppose I had a crisis of confidence. I kept taking it personally. What had I done wrong? Had my writing declined in quality? Was the stuff I wrote just not wanted anymore? I still can’t figure it out.

Substack is great, by the way, and is shaping up to be one of my favourite places to hang out. It’s newsletters, any kind of writing, and social media all wrapped up in one. It took me a little while to get myself settled in, but at the moment I am posting an end of the month author newsletter, an end of the week round-up, and any poems or short stories I would normally put on Medium, I now put on Substack first.

Substack is a lot of fun but it is not as easy to make money there. Money is raised from having paid subscribers. I feel grateful enough to have any subscribers, whether there or here on my trusty old blog. To ask them to pay seems a lot.

I’ve set mine up for paid but have no paid subs yet and I don’t expect to get any for a long time. Still, I am happy to have almost 100 subscribers who I really hope are genuinely interested in me and my books. Let’s see what happens.

Back to Medium – I am not ready to give up on it just yet. It was foolish to ever rely on it for an income, and I didn’t, not really. It was just very handy extra money that made life easier for a bit. I am hanging around to see what happens, and like everyone else, I guess I am trying to crack the code again.

I decided to up my game in March and my content has increased back to my usual levels. It’s not making a difference so far and at this rate it is soon going to be hard to recoup the $5 you pay to be a member.

It makes me feel sad, in all honesty. All I ever wanted in my life was to be a writer. I am a writer and on good days I am incredibly proud of myself, my books, and the work I put in. I couldn’t give up writing, if I tried. It’s just what I do. It’s who I am.

But for a while there, Medium made me feel like a real writer. You know, someone whose words get read by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Someone who uses writing money to pay the bills. It was nice while it lasted but now I am right back where I began.

There had to be an answer somewhere. I guess I will keep on looking.

Giving up is not an option. And for all its faults and ups and downs, I will continue to publish writing on Medium. Writing there has given me an outlet for other types of work, such as essays, articles and poems, and like I always tell the kids I work with, writing in many formats and writing as often as you can, is how you get better.

I’m in it for the long haul.