change of direction

I have always had the luxury of being able to write whatever I've wanted to write. That's because I worked for over thirty years as as teacher, and my wife was chair of two different university departments, so we had plenty of reliable income.

But times change. Well into retirement, we have found that the last of our ten children have required more than the usual push and we're sitting on the precipice where what we worked for is rapidly shrinking. So I may have to change the direction of my writing toward making money. And this, as writers know, could mean trouble.

Fortunately I can see, from my rapidly-gained perspective on the indie book world, what works and what doesn't. The main question is whether I can bring myself to do it. I have other ways of making money which I will use, and I could just keep my retirement hobby as a hobby and continue to write what i want.

I look at my ratings, which are much better in the kindle column than the paperback column, and I realize that most of what I've got has come through the hard work of read-marketing. I read yours, somebody reads mine. I've learned a lot that way and gptten as my main audience other writers who want to be read the same way. But now I've become impatient with that - too slow. Life is too short to read anything unless you really want to in the first place. But I'm continuing with it for a while just because of habit and because basically, it's a fun way to spend time when you can so easily be distracted, and I have plenty of that time. I am, basically, retired. I have to face the reality that it could be all over at any minute.

But it's not, and as long as I'm around, you'll be seeing something.