I constantly have thoughts of giving up on my books. At least once a month, since I started, I’ve had intense thoughts of, “this is never going to work out. I’m wasting my time. I should quit and do something else.”
It’s a tough nagging feeling. As much as I sometimes want to quit, I also have so many stories to tell. One thing that keeps me going was at a book reading that only three kids attended, I was once again thinking about quitting, when a mom of one of the kids came up to me and wanted to check out my books to buy one. She took all of them over to a table to read them and see which one she wanted. About 5-10 minutes later she came over fighting back tears and said her daughter read, “How High Can You Jump.” I apologized to her for my illustrations not being very good and she said her daughter had been having a tough time at school and her daughter lit up reading the book and she had to buy it.
As much as I want to make enough money to work on my books full time, that one moment made me realize just how much one book could change someone’s life.