If You Live by Yourself, You Can Write a Lot of Books

Feeling Lonely in the Festival Crowd

See me in the picture surrounded by my books. Yes, there are many. I have published sixteen different titles. I didn’t even bring all of them to the festival where I sold and signed last weekend. The most common comments, especially from other authors, were, “You have a lot of books,” “You have been busy,” or “You’re so prolific.”

I responded, “Yes” or, sometimes, “Guilty.” I almost felt like I needed to apologize. I wasn’t trying to show anybody up. To those who paused long enough to listen, I explained that I have been at it a long time and I live alone.

Nobody followed up on that. Maybe they couldn’t think of anything tactful to say, or maybe they didn’t believe me. But it’s true. Writers taking care of children or their aging parents and spending time with their partners have much less time to write or to do all the non-writing things that go along with being an author.

I do have a brother, nieces, nephews, an aunt and many cousins, but none of them live nearby. My days are clear to write, submit, publish, promote, and repeat the process.

It hasn’t always been that way. Before my stepson moved out and Fred and I moved to Oregon, I published one slim educational book at age 38. When it was just the two of us, I produced four more. Since my husband died in 2011, I have put out eleven books. For a while, I was freelancing for local newspapers and earning money as a choir director at church, but I had tons of time to write. People laugh when I say I have a lot of books because this is all I do. It’s not a joke.

I have hours of uninterrupted time because I’m alone. It’s no surprise that so many people in the arts seek alone time so they can create. Working your art around the needs of others definitely limits your output.

Then again, when you’re alone, where do you get ideas? You have to go out and track them down. Or go deep inside. You write about your dog. You write about your memories. You write about your travels. You write about living alone. Or you write novels about made-up characters doing fascinating things.

We take the material we’re given, and we make what we make.

Selling books all day is exhausting. I scribbled notes throughout the day for a future piece about whether doing book fairs is worth the effort. I suspect one can sell more books online than sitting at a table all day. But the publicity is good.

I was jealous of the young woman at the table on my left. She brought her whole family to help. At any time, her mom, dad, or husband was sitting with her, one of them always available to wrangle her children. When the festival ended, she didn’t have to carry everything to the car by herself. Not that there was much to carry. She wrote one fantasy novel that sold like crazy. I wanted to be her, surrounded by family and with so many promising years ahead.

I felt old and tired. Too often, I feel as if all I have is my books.

Lest we feel sorry for ourselves, my 82-year-old friend Judy Fleagle sat on the other side of me. She staffed her table by herself and sold twice as many books as I did. She has many different titles. The latest is Living Life to the Fullest . . . after Age 70! A local resident and one of the festival’s founders, she was surrounded by friends most of the day, and people showed up to help when it was time to load the car. Positive juju helps. I need to work on that.

I learned that my newest book, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, is a hard sell at a festival where the attendees are looking for fun reads. Dementia is not fun. I sold two copies, but it’s the kind of book people pick up privately or at a place dedicated to dealing with the disease.

I had several conversations with people who had dealt with dementia in their own families and a tearful talk with a woman who is in the early stages herself. By the time we finished, we were holding hands and both in tears. People want to talk about it. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I was there.

The most fun was selling my novels, especially to people who have read the first two books in my Beaver Creek series and were ready for Book Three, Between the Bridges. Fiction is fun. I can give my characters all the family and friends I don’t have, along with better looks, more courage, and troubles from which they emerge triumphant.

Sometimes the true stories, like our stories of being alone, are harder to market. But people need to hear them, and I’m going to keep telling the stories that beg to be told.

One person asked which of my books was my favorite. I laughed and said, “These are all my babies. I can’t do that.”

Next year, I’m going to try harder to find a buddy to come with me. In the years my husband or my friend Pat helped me, it was much easier. Selling your books or anything else at a festival is something you can do alone, but it’s hard. Maybe it’s another situation where I need to learn to ask for help.

And maybe I shouldn’t bring every damned book I have written, just the ones best suited for the occasion. It’s always a learning experience.

How about you? Does being alone give you time to do things other people can’t? Like what? Is it a worthy tradeoff for being on your own?

Photo by the fabulous poet Annis Cassells

---

How did I end up alone? I didn’t have any kids. After my husband and I retired to the Oregon coast, far from family, he died of Alzheimer’s. You can read our story in my new memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, available now at your favorite bookseller. Visit https://www.suelick.com for information on all of my books.