When Someone Else's Dreams Eclipse Your Own

It's been a while since I've written, mostly because I'm helping my father self-publish for the first time. [I'm by no means anywhere near an expert at it, but there it is.] He's been published in magazines and has co-written numerous books in the past, but this is his first stab at publishing his own work and it's rather overwhelming for the both of us.

Him for the entire world of self publishing that has opened up to him. Me because I've only ever self-published once and have never gone the print route. So it's been a series of starts and stops, editing, image correcting, formatting and headaches all around. 

So the past few months have been stressful and I haven't had the time or means to work on my own projects without feeling guilty that I'm not working on his. 

But I'm taking today and what I can of this week to scratch the writing itch that has been bugging me for a long while. Going from writing 3,000 - 4,000 words a day to zip for months has kinda left me bereft. 

I'm almost finished with Chapter 5 of The Welkinbane, my steampunk novel, with another 13 on the docket. I want to re-visit Thistledown and streamline it for re-publication. Thinking of going the POD [Print On Demand] route for it as well. Plus, I've got Thistletorn sitting on my hard drive half-done, twiddling it's thumbs while I try to get my act together on the plot of the trilogy.

The silver lining of helping my father on his project is that I'm learning a lot about self-publishing, POD, and E-Publishers. Not to mention the Daddy Kudos Points I've been racking up.

I know that I can't ignore his project, but I can't ignore mine either...so finding a balance is going to be a challenge so that we can both reach our dreams. Alternating weeks seems like a good way around the problem and I'm planning on giving it a shot.

Having your dreams eclipsed by someone else's isn't a basket of funfetti and banana cupcakes, but it does feel good, at the end of the day, to help someone else out with theirs.