Step 4: How writing is the easy part, he said.

(this is all part of the One Novel Three-Month challenge. Click here for more info)

Writing a novel is so much easier than selling one.

It might sound ridiculous to some people. But I know how to write a novel. Maybe not a good one, but I can do a beginning, middle, end, a host of characters, maybe even a theme or two.

But in this deluge? (Imagine me waving vaguely towards the internet)

With all this content out there? Why would anyone take time to read what I've written? It's not a matter of quality or even audience, because I think there is an audience for what I'm going to write, and it might not be amazingly written but it will be palatable enough.

It's getting fucking eyeballs on the damn thing, and then grabbing someone's attention long enough to care.

That's why I've been trying to put everything on social media, by the by, if there's anyone as negative as the voices in my head say they are, cringing at every post and rolling their eyes in annoyance everytime I ask someone to sub.

It has never been harder to get some attention.

I started a Medium account the other day and put up an edited version of my first post. I paid for membership, and then I found a bunch of other posts with a similar hashtag (#30daydchallenge). I commented, read their posts and hoped it meant that the algorthm would deign, like some kind of digital aristocrat, to allow me an audience, an invitation to the party.

I thought, hell, if I post every day, if I comment and read a lot of posts, and just go full ham, well then, oh my then, maybe I'll get some attention.

The next day I checked my post, and I got 50 "claps" and even a comment. I was fucking over the moon.

Then I checked my stats and I had one read.

One view.

One.

It turns out someone I commented on came and read mine, and then they gave me fifty claps. I appreciate the enthusiasm, in fact it's kind of hilarious; imagine a dark room when you're on stage, with an audience you've invited to a show. You can't see whose there and then you hear manic clapping…and at first you're jazzed, then the lights go on and its one dude whooping and hollering.

Since then I haven’t posted. Shit I would have taken ten views, truth be told. But one was just a kick to the nuts.

Now, of course, I'm not entitled to anything. I'm not saying I am. I just want to put that out there. It's my job to somehow, somehow grab strangers' attention when it comes to this mess.

And the thing is, I know it's not sheer random chance, either. There's a system. The right platform with the right hashtags with the right timing with the right content with the right amount of goddamn temerity, and boom, some kind of audience. Maybe not a big one, but something.

For example, I could go on Medium and I could literally read every article I can find with my hashtag for an hour. I could comment on every single one. Maybe they'll check my shit out. Will this help Medium promote my work- no one knows. But it might work, like a shaman of yore attempting to cast a cyber ritual with sticks, stones and candles.

Maybe Great Cthulhu shows up. Maybe.

Or how about a YouTube channel dedicated to the challenge, or with my poetry performances? Promoted on certain websites, maybe I create fake accounts and post it, maybe I just post my own, and then I pull the entrails out of the clockwork raven and drip its digital blood onto the silicon altar and what, maybe get some hits?

Or SEO the website to hell, get a real pro, heck, PAY a pro- even though I'll always be wondering if I bribed my way to success and made a net loss, if it even worked. Maybe organic traffic directs people to my writing blog.

There's a lot of options, those are barely scratching the surface. Instagram. Facebook (let's face it, not really), Reddit (doubt that will work either), Wattpad?

And all of it is a time investment, which ok, I can do, actually. I just sleep less and cuddle my wife less for 3 months. Its doable. My marriage probably won't fail. But the emotional investment is high too. The constant hoping and disappointment and all the rest.

The sheer futility if I fail. The crushing realisation that this must be me, I'm the common denominator. My content is at least. If you fail to go viral in the morning, your ass got an unlucky. But if you fail to go viral every day, then you're the asshole.

And that's the hard part. It's the disappointment. I am not a cold, confident, whatever-the-fuck sort of person that writes self-help books. No, I am insecure, sensitive to criticism, hesitant and fully aware of the flaws in everything I create.

So what's the solution?

I don't know yet. But I'm parsing it out, day after day.

I think all I can do is consult a sage. So I'm doing that soon too.

I think I know one or two. Just got to hike up the mountain first.

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