Being an Indie Author Is Hard: On Writing, Rejection, and Keeping Going

Camille Gossett
Aug 7
4 min read

Being a creative is hard. Like, way harder than I ever thought it would be. I have so much respect for people who make money doing this thing. On the bright side, I’ve at least procured some income in the first few months since launching my debut novel. However, the outcome of the entire emergent indie-author experience—of promulgating a seven-hundred-plus-page work containing some of my deepest, most soulful thoughts—has been less than illustrious. It’s been so difficult, in fact, that I have all but put a halt to my efforts to self-promote and have turned to my Zen Buddhist practice for solace and inspiration more than I have been writing or marketing over the last month and a half.

I have read story after story of authors, entrepreneurs, and artists who struggled uphill, collecting their rejections like cobblestones leading them toward their ultimate destination of overwhelming success. I get the gist of the writer’s plight: you work really hard, put yourself in incredibly vulnerable positions by integrating slivers of yourself into your product, and then get ignored by everyone in the Universe—or, occasionally, get told you suck at your passion and should pursue a real job. It’s rough out here, folks. But no one ever said it would be pleasant or easy.

I often don’t know if I should keep going with this writing pursuit of mine or give up and accept that I’m a caretaker and a parent, and that writing should be for my journals more so than for the general public. Hell, maybe I should even do what my husband urges me to do: get my real estate license and work in that professional sphere until retirement. He tries to be supportive, but he quantifies things by their outputs to determine their value, and unfortunately, I have little to show for all my efforts.

I was so excited to finally be in a position to write my book. But then life kept happening. It was like the Universe knew when I had finally gotten my head screwed on straight and was ready to put action behind my aspirations, so it chose just that time to throw some of the most difficult challenges I have faced thus far in my life at me. I feel confused about how to proceed and what to do with this body of work I have created. Maybe it’s Imposter Syndrome coupled with other social factors, but I just find it hard to believe there is any point to what I do, which I dedicate hours upon hours every week to pursuing. Does any of it matter?

This question—and the internal cognitive struggle surrounding it—is, in part, why I turn to Zen Buddhist philosophy to help me continue along my path. It helps me understand that we do not need external validation to make our work, or ourselves, real. The sheer act of doing and being, and what we learn along the way, is meaningful and matters in the grand scheme of life and the human condition.

So, like meditation, the benefits of writing for me aren’t supposed to come from show and glory. The impact is in the act of doing and in what it brings to the world simply because it was done.

This reality also means I must learn to let go of the idea that I am writing for fame. And that’s a hard one for me because I think, secretly, all of us artists—whatever our medium of choice may be—want to be recognized for our talent and paid for it so that we can do it full-time. I know that is my wish. But it is one aspect of the trade I am pondering in the here and now, and I have identified it as an area in which I need to change.

My answer? I am going to keep going while simultaneously working on myself as a person.

Who is to say what the future holds? But I have always been a writer, and it is the only job I have ever had that doesn’t make me want to run away, change my identity, and live in a shack off the coast of some unheard-of foreign island. I just am not cut out for the corporate world, and I don’t think that will be changing anytime soon.

Point being, I know what I want to do and be, and I am positioned to pursue it at present, so I am not going to waste this opportunity by getting stuck feeling sorry for myself or engaging in petty self-comparison. Here’s to delving back into the hard stuff and piecing it together one word at a time.

The Storyteller’s Grace and The Therapist will continue to trudge onward, and I will continue cheerleading The Storyteller’s Grace—the novel that started it all, the first thing I’ve ever really finished—for no reason other than that I know the message will mean something to someone out there.

And I hope it finds them when the time is right for them to receive it.

Love,

Camille