I think I’ve spent about 400 hours on this trilogy, so far. I’ll spend many more on getting it published and then selling it. I guess that’s only the equivalent of ten weeks, though, at a full-time job. I certainly haven’t been working on it full-time and – other commitments being what they are – I’m unlikely to in the future.
As an unknown author (ten years as a magazine columnist notwithstanding), I’m risking that time going to waste, and what else? Hopes? Dreams? Affluence?
Sometimes it feels like all of those things are at risk, and more. Other times, kind people remind me why I started the books in the first place. I just wanted to put the idea out there. Even if nobody reads it, I will have tried my best to plant the seed of something I desperately want to grow into… well, into some actual History Maps.
From that perspective, the bigger risk would have been to not write the books.
That’s okay, then.