
Getting Started ... Again
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It is a new year, and so, the first blog post has to be about starting something new or resolutions. Since PoppaDoc Press is new, that's pretty much all I've got. But I am not new. As I write this, I'm sixty years old, and starting something new is tough.
When my wife, Mary Kay, and I first got married thirty-six years ago, things were tough. We lived in a small apartment, had thrift-store furniture, and hand-me-down pans in the kitchen. As the years unfolded, we began new jobs, bought new furniture, and had (new) babies. The more New Years we celebrated, the more comfortable life became. Now I've got a nice recliner and we finally broke down and bought a big-screen TV. That's a pretty comfortable spot.
I've learned this past year that starting a business in not comfortable. Sure there is the "Hey, you have to get up out of the recliner and do some work" uncomfortable, but there is much more. When you start something new, you will be put in the uncomfortable position of realizing how much you don't know. I have always loved writing, and even had a couple of books published, but starting a publishing company quickly showed me how much I didn't know about starting a publishing company.
Uncomfortable!!
- There were days this past year when I didn't think I was smart enough to figure all this stuff out (those days still pop up every now and then - like this month when I can't figure out how to get the sign up for our newsletter form to work - argh!).
- Days when I look around my office and thought, "There is no way I'm organized enough to make this happen."
- There were lots of moments when I just wanted to sit comfortably and do some mind-numbing scrolling on my phone.
But -
- Oh the excitement of opening a box with a copy of a book I'd written.
- The amazing feeling of handing another person a copy of their first book.
- The thrill of having a company webpage up and running (and the horror because there are so many things that still need fixed on it. :-).
Getting started is uncomfortable, but also exhilarating.
It reminds me of a quote from the movie Armageddon when Owen Wilson's character is being buckled into a rocket and says,
"It's like 98% excited and 2% scared ... or it could be 2% excited and 98% scared, but that's what makes it so intense."
It seems like each week I can teeter back and forth between those two extremes, but I wouldn't change it. I'm having a blast. In 2024, we went from and idea to eight published books, with over thirty on deck for publishing this year. That is exciting.
It's a new year, and you might be thinking you want to start something new. You might not even know what it is. Or, you might have a dream but you took a step towards it before and it failed. That can make stepping out even scarier. That's where I was in 2023.
PoppaDoc Press started in 2024, but my dreams began long before that. Way, way, way back in 1982, I told my guidance counselor I wanted to become a writer. He told me I needed to find a real job. In 2007, while I was supposed to be writing the dissertation for my Ph.D., I instead wrote a manuscript for a novel. The manuscript sold to a small publishing company, and just like that I was a published author.
A few months later, the publishing company went out of business (I don't think my book was the cause :-).
Then company gave me all the rights back for my book so I could find another company to to work with, but the thought of finding a different publisher was depressing. My goal had been to become a published author. I had done it, so I made the decision to just write stories because I enjoyed it, rather than worrying about publishing. And so I did.
That first book was titled The Next Alligator Hunter. I wrote it after Steve Irwin - The Crocodile Hunter had died. I wondered how many kids might have wanted to follow in his footsteps. (For legal reasons the publishing company made me change the name to Alligator Hunter).
The manuscript sat in a computer file until last year when I decided to begin PoppaDoc Press. Now, Keegan Scott and the Amazing Alligator Hunt is a published book, and it is part of a series of books written for kids ages 8 to 13-ish. In 2024, the first three books were published, and the fourth book will be published this year.
You do not have to do it like I did!
It doesn't have to take 42 years. Just do it! Take the first step. It is going to be uncomfortable, but that is the only way the adventure will begin, and that's the only way dreams come true.
Join me on my adventure!
If you have made it this far in this post, I want to encourage you to sign up for our brand new newsletter*. Theoretically, you could use the link on the webpage, but... argh! So, I've got a temporary sign-up form here. I look forward to having you along.
For those of you who sign up between now and Valentines day, I will send you a free PDF copy of Keegan Scott and the Amazing Alligator Hunt.
*I promise you I will never sell your address or spam your account, because that makes me very angry when it happens to me.