Personally, I think the pundits finally got one thing right: as difficult and exhausting as writing can be, nothing compares to the challenges and misery of promoting oneself.

The sheer number of electronic tracks alone makes this experience quite daunting. (I come across that word quite often when talking about trying to sell one’s work.) And as many of us have come to realize, it’s not just the sheer number of internet sites, it’s the TIME you need to spend on them to become credible. That’s the REAL killer. I will spend at least an hour agonizing over THIS composition.

Plus, here you are, all excited and duly proud of yourself for completing something you spent weeks, months, even years on and can’t even get your sister to buy one and give it a five-star rating. You should have this HUGE celebration with all your friends. Instead, you fumble around like a teenager in the backseat of your old man’s Chevy, trying to add some kind of Pin to a board somewhere you REALLY don’t care. And it’s TWO IN THE MORNING!

But he checked his numbers and he is ranked 697,364 in the ranking of Amazon best sellers. So you text and tweet. You create a fan page. your blog. Your Skype. Your Pin, and your Tumble. You contact all the “friends” you have and ask them to contact all the friends they have, and all the friends they have, and so on. “Yeah,” they say, “I’ll get myself a copy of that new book you just published. I’ll read it, rate it, and give it a bunch of stars.” Two days later and now you are at 798,621.

So text and tweet some more for support and ideas. But as many tips as I get; I write. I consider myself a writer. Perhaps not very lucid, but a writer after all. I have stories inside of me. Having them stay there while I attend to other business just makes them angry and this will ultimately lead to some really bad juju.

By nature, I am not a tweeter or texter, Pinner or Tumbler. I’m not trying to bump into anything. I don’t really like using Skype and I secretly hate all my “friends” on Facebook.

So here I am, trying to promote my book on another probably pointless site, and now it’s 3 in the fucking morning. I keep repeating to myself: “I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer…