Control: 990+…

I, Dalton Lewis, have over 990 free downloads or purchases of my novels. That’s good. I’m proud of myself. It could be better. I could do better, but this is still good. It’s still a positive building step — towards future success.

At first I just wrote novels without any thought to how to publish them. I wrote Illusionary Paintings in college without knowing how to craft a story or put scenes together in an order with rising tension and dramatic conflict between characters. Things just happened. Now there was an announcement. Next we had a party. I just sat there, late at night, in my room, drinking soda or water or lemonade or whatever, typing desperately for a few minutes and then sitting there and thinking. Then I’d suddenly start typing again for several more minutes. I’d cut entire scenes and rewrite scenes over and over, cutting almost everything and making it over and over. I’d butcher the whole thing.

Illusionary Paintings sold maybe half a dozen copies — tops — when it came out around ten years ago. I self-published it on the internet. I hadn’t tried very hard to get an agent because my family didn’t think my writing was ready to get published. They didn’t think that I was there yet. I agreed — I wasn’t any good. I thought that I wasn’t good enough. Day in, day out, I wrote and wrote and wrote and thought that I wasn’t good enough — thought that my writing was poor and I didn’t know why.

Next I finished college and started to write my epic, my opus, my masterpiece, My Little Paradise. I wanted to say something, something important. Writing an unforgettable work of literature about being young and unhappy — that was the goal. I started out by writing about middle school. I remembered middle school as the most maniacal, cynical hell in existence — the worst experience that a person could possibly face. I remembered being made fun of, failing at everything, and watching the cool kids get everything while I got nothing.

This story possessed me: writing about being mad, about watching you get nothing, about watching everyone else get everything, at watching your friends not admit to being your friends, at all the hell that happened in middle school. I wrote and wrote and wrote. There was only one problem.

I didn’t know enough about the craft still. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how to have scenes build into other scenes and develop into a bigger story. I didn’t know to have dramatic conflict between the characters. The descriptions were okay, when I had them — I suppose. The characters didn’t make me love them. They were flawed and weak. I was afraid of making them amazing. I was afraid of making them great. I failed.

My friend Richie was sorry but didn’t like the book when I wrote it. He didn’t like it because it had preachy life lessons several times that were then forgotten in the next chapter. He didn’t like it because I didn’t write it very well. He looked so broken as he told me the truth — that my novel was bad. My sister said so, too. I became mentally ill then and didn’t get much done for a long time.

Ten years passed. During those ten years I wrote a little, mostly playing with My Little Paradise and a couple of horror ideas that didn’t turn into anything yet. I grew up. I lived. I played video games and strategy games and dated women and lived on my own. I tried to get a normal job and spectacularly failed. I became ill with paranoid schizophrenia which made the rigors of a normal job very difficult.

Then the medications became somewhat better at allowing me to pay attention to the world around me. I didn’t get distracted as easily during conversations. I was able to work on writing and reading and be more productive. That was maybe five years ago. Then I started writing again — I wrote five hundred or so blog entries, trying to get better with each successive month or year worth of blogs. I wrote fan fiction which got hundreds of reads. I got maybe a hundred or two hundred blog reads out of a month of blog entries.

Then something happened. I published a horror novel called Impressions of Suburbia. I thought nothing of it; it sold virtually nothing, as many of my novels had. Then I released it for free for a week because I decided it might be a good idea. Then the downloads started — one, then a dozen, then thirty. In one week I had four hundred free copies downloaded, and some of those people actually read the book. I’m proud of that.

I wrote two more books over the course of the next nine months: one a horror novel called Modern Goth and the other a fantasy novel called The Dread Lord Icon. They came out earlier this month, and each one had a lot of free downloads and a few purchases. I’m proud of myself to have done well as a writer. I hope to continue to do well. I want people to read the novels that they have downloaded. I want them to get reviews. I sit here, in my forties, with a little bit more knowledge, drinking soda and water, typing away at a computer, living my life, fumbling away, trying to figure out how to write. I just do my best. Here’s to the next thousand downloads.

Thanks, and take care, friends.