Trying to write and publish books for a living is really very difficult. When you’re neurodivergant, it takes on a whole new level of frustration…

Life is hard enough. You have to make sure that you have shelter, clothing, food, clean water. If you have a family, you have to make sure that you have enough of all of those things for them as well. And that’s just the basic considerations!
If you can work, you take on a job and pay for the stuff of life, then that’s the optimum for all humans – maintaining it is just a case of getting up in the morning, going to work, earning your wages and paying for the basics.

Or at least that’s what we’re taught to think in school.
School was created to make you a good worker – just literate, numerate and socially concious enough that you can do what needs to be done for the boss at a very basic level, and a minimum wage. This is Apprentice level education

College (the UK definition of college is Further Education) is to teach you skills that you may need to do those jobs – if you are in a position to need it. So the expectation is that if you go to college that you will come out of it with a practical skill that will give you a higher wage. Although recently it has become an off-shoot of University in some ways, it is very definitely Journeyman level education.

University (Higher Education in the UK, College in the USA) is supposed to (in theory) teach you to think, problem solve, learn more about various subjects and be able to manage people and time. This is supposed to be the top end of education, however, when you reach a university, you realise just how much you don’t know about your subject and what you can and can’t do. This is why it is so hard to go from School to University – the jump in expectation and difficulty level is huge.
Even a Bachelors degree is hard to navigate. In fact in today’s world, you’re expected to at least have a Bachelors level before you can even start in a low level skilled position.

What has this got to do with being a neurodivergant Independant author, I hear you asking.

Well, I graduated from being an “Apprentice” level Indie author to a “Journeyman” level a while back. I’ve got 13 ebooks, 10 of those in print, all published through Draft 2 Digital, 6 childrens books published in collaboration with Maria Kuroshchepova. So 19 books in all. Of those books, seven have covers that I’ve created. Some through canva, others through my own artistic skills. Some of those books were edited by me, others were edited by professional editors.

I consider myself a low level journeyman in the publishing business – I know I have a lot more to learn and a lot more to do before I can even consider myself a low level master. This is going to involve money, time and focus… 3 things that I rarely have.

Taking each thing in turn – Money.

This doesn’t grow on trees. The reason I create my own covers, do my own editing and formatting etc is because the average manuscript (of the length that I write) costs roughly £1200 to edit and needs at least two, if not three editing passes. My manuscripts are usually fairly clean of spelling and major grammar errors, but it’s not just about spelling and grammar; you need to keep the characters consistant, remove repeated words and phrases, the story hole free and the tropes/cliches under control. I know a few that I would trust with my books.

Then of course you need a cover, wide distribution, good formatting of all types of book – E Book, Print, Audiobook. The cover needs a good artist/designer who knows how to translate the content of the book into a cover that will grab a prospective reader. I know several. Some of them have even done covers for me already.
Distribution, thankfully, is dealt with by going through Draft 2 Digital. However, it also makes Piracy easier which is not ideal, but not something I can deal with currently.
Formatting again, is done by me, via Draft 2 Digital. I can do ebook and print.
Audiobook requires a whole different skill set which I am not in the slightest bit capable of doing – it’s honestly not a case of just reading out loud, recording it and uploading it somewhere! Like editing, if you want a polished product you need a narrator with a good voice to read it, a sound editor that knows what they are doing to record the book, and a decent platform. And that takes more money to do than a cover and an editor!

It also takes equipment, which is something that can get quite expensive. I used to have a brilliant laptop. It could handle my graphics needs for covers, the software for audio editing (and I’d just started learning how to do it as well) and was quick enough to keep up with everything I needed it to do. Then it died on me, and I haven’t been able to replace it (I’m typing this on my son’s chromebook) yet. But I am doing my best with what I’ve got.

Time. Time is one of those things which is affected by multiple things.
I am ND (Neurodivergant) and my timesense is warped. If I am focused on something, I often forget to eat, drink, take breaks, pick up my kids from school, do the shopping, help my partner do something that he cannot manage by himself, housework, cats… time, quite simply, disappears for me when I am focused and I often need someone to prod me and hand me a snack or tell me to get a shower coz I stink…
One minute it can be elevenses, the next, it’s dark outside, the kids are home and hungry and I have to put down what I am working on and become mum again.

Time is also required for all the tasks. I struggle with deadlines, I (like Douglas Adams) enjoy the sight and sound of them whizzing past me. And while I learned how to project manage during my degree; applying the principles to myself is easier said than done, as anyone with ASD/ADHD will be able to understand. I can do it to other people, cannot even think about it for myself – it causes overwhelm and freezing… and then everything in my life suffers, not just my writing. This is why I often have to shift preorder dates and publication dates.
I have a family and a house to keep running as well. This is another place where Time is not on my side. I get the most done when my younger kids are at school. Holidays are awful for trying to get anything to do with my business done – they are ND as well and need me for all sorts of reasons. My partner is physically disabled and needs me as well, so the amount of time I have for working is limited; I’m on call 24/7.

Focus. Often referred to as word flow by authors.

As a SD Audhd, Focus in the sense of being able to sit and work for long periods, comes easily to me. If it’s something that I enjoy doing, I can hyperfocus almost instantly. I can research easily, I can write about subjects that I love like dragons, other books, crafting… however, when it’s something which is urgh or is meh for me, doing it slows to a crawl or just plain doesn’t get done. Procrastination is something else I excell at!

My word flow, when I am focused, is usually pretty good. I can do a thousand or so words in an hour when I’m really hyperfocused. That doesn’t happen much anymore though. Life has dragged the ADHD side of my brain into the sunlight and distraction comes in the form of making things, playing games, reading books, walking or having coffee with my friends.

Which means that my writing is suffering because I find it hard to engage with my wips. I can start a new project, but to go back and actually finish one of the books I am currently working on is like wading in treacle – unless I actually manage to catch the right headspace and have an idea of how to continue it.

I know there are people out there waiting for the next book in one (or more) of my series, but because I can’t get into the right headspace for it, I can’t get the first draft finished, let alone edited, covered, formatted and published!

So what’s a poor, ND Indie Author to do?

Well for a start, you dig your heels in and tell yourself that you are not going to give up writing. Then you choose your projects carefully. I have an A4 notebook with a list of all my wips. I look at that, decide which one is calling me and go look at the relevant file on the HDD. At the moment it’s The Spidreen Wars series that I’m interested in, so I’m editing for holes, character etc (did the basic edit a while ago) and working on the cover – which is almost there; I’m using my phone to draw it and it takes a lot of effort to work on something that small when compared to a proper tablet or graphics set up.

As a way of keeping my interest on the series, I’ve started on the first draft of the second story. It helps me with checking my characters (I’ve found many a wrong eye colour or favourite phrase doing it this way) and often builds up the story in the original one because I find plot holes and need to fill them or explain their existence in the new one.

Then you run the ms through another basic edit (just in case, you never know) upload it to D2D, work through the formatting for the e book and preview it at least five times per page (I’ve not had many complaints about my formatting at least) before you hit publish.

Then you hope that people like it enough to buy it.

That’s as far as my marketing goes a lot of the time. I often do a couple of social media posts in the run up to publication and in the week or so after it, but mostly I let them sit.
I’ve been told that I should pay for facebook ads, put myself on bookbub, do an email newsletter, do interviews, Tik Tok/Youtube videos about it – but that’s just adding more Urgh or Meh tasks to something which in my mind, is already finished and I have no interest in anymore.

I have yet to earn enough money from the books I have already published, to rectify my equipment problems, pay for an editor or cover, or even just pay for lunch. It’s a slow process. Some people question why I am doing it this way – “wouldn’t being a traditional author be less work?” – but that way lies working with other people who are not receptive to my particular quirks. I learned that the hard way. I much prefer setting my own goals and being able to flex deadlines if I have to .
Also trad authors have a lot more work than I do just to get picked up by an agent, let alone get a publishing deal…
I’m not quite that crazy yet!

So Frustration is the name of the game, no matter what route you take to publication.