So I have to admit I went into a bit of a funk lately. After the high of releasing by sci-fi robot ebook, Robot Awareness, my motivation came crashing down after slow sales.

What happened? It wasn’t sudden. A number of things slowly added up. First off, new authors have a hard time getting noticed. It takes time, and effort, and willingness to stick to it. Even the famed Hugh Howey didn’t sell many books until he had quite a catalog of titles stacked up.

To date, I’ve sold about 35 copies. Not bad. Not enough to pay for the cost of putting the cover together, but at least people bought it.

I think the more difficult part was the lack of response. Even among the people who bought the book, I’ve heard little. I’ve gotten two 5-star reviews, but other than that, I’ve heard nothing. Even among people I know were reading it, I’ve not heard anything.

Putting out Part I was hard. Even with as much editing as I could muster, I know it’s not my best work. I wrote it five years ago – and I know my writing has improved since then.

I worked diligently on revising Part II for awhile, but I have to admit I started to lose interest. I picked up some consulting work outside my day job, which paid more than my day job, and that only made it easier to put off those revisions.

But today I just went for it. I said, this is it. I’m going to do it. I dug right into Chapter 19, and revised the whole thing. It’s a lesson I keep learning. Sometimes you just have to make yourself start.

One of the rebuttals I heard from Why Writing Everyday is Bullshit, was the idea of momentum. Let me be clear, whether you write every day or not, you have to be disciplined. Often that means making yourself start in the first place.

It’s something else I borrowed from the fitness world. When I don’t want to train, I tell myself that I’m going to just do a little. Usually once I get out there, I find I’ll often do much more than a little.

I guess I need to remember that for writing as well.

To other authors out there, how do you stay motivated, especially new authors, when it feels like no one is reading?