Freedom!

I love my job because it gives me the freedom to do what I want, when I want to do it. I am an author. However, I publish independently. This has several distinct advantages, as well as a few disadvantages. The only person to hassle me about my deadlines is myself, the only ones that I have to answer to at all in fact are my two most fluffy and excellent feline mistresses, and they're happy with some food and a scritch behind the ears most days.

When growing up I was constantly being told that I would have to work for someone else, though I was seeing people that went their own way in life and made something for themselves, and I was therefore determined to do similarly. Yes, I've worked for other people off and on during my life, but I've never been a model employee. Filching office supplies, coming in to work late, these kinds of things. However, it being data entry and later, scanning... well it's hardly National Defence, is it?

Now, though... now I create worlds and people to inhabit these worlds. I torment these only vaguely existent folks with all kinds of terrors and end many of their meagre lives long before they can do anything significant with them. And then, there's the protagonist. Never wanting to do the thing, go through the process, but always having to because I'm the one writing their story, and I GET TO CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!

So freedom in life, freedom in creativity and expression. These are the aspects of being a writer that appeal to me the most, I think. As an independent author I don't make the big bucks, certainly, but I also don't have publishing companies breathing down my neck making certain that I stick to some arbitrary date that they've set as the finishing point of my stories. I think that deadlines certainly give authors the needed impetus to be able to finish work in many cases, sure, but in far many more cases I believe that it is to the detriment of the tale being told.

As a gamer, for example, if a game is rushed out of the developer (Cyberpunk 2077 is a prime example of this) because of investors wanting to make a profit but the product itself is not complete... and that was with a game that declared on its initial teaser trailer that it would be out 'when it was ready'. Well, my friends, CD Projekt RED lied about that. Because investors demanded that they release it before it was ready. If this can happen with a game, then why not a book, or a series of books?

This is why being shackled to the traditional methods of publishing is not necessarily a good idea. Among other reasons, naturally. Publishing independently you end up with a good deal more of the revenue that your writing generates, at least percentage-wise. No deadlines, as I've outlined above. Nobody telling you what to write about, as well. My first series was a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Journal, after all. Almost everybody I told about it was asking 'Why?' if not flat out telling me that zombie stories aren't popular or regarded as 'high art' or 'literature' or anything else. My father would have flat out done his absolute best to talk me out of writing it at all. Instead, I've made a small amount of real money from it. I am also fully aware that no publishing company would have taken a glance at even the first page.

The author should be the author of their own work, as well as their own destiny.

The major downside of publishing independently, however, is everything else that you must also do in order to become successful. Marketing, advertising, all of these things that publishing companies and agents and managers all do for mainstream authors. At least the popular ones, anyway. I won't necessarily state that they are the 'good' ones, as good and popular are often diametrically opposed, but definitely the popular authors with traditional publishing backgrounds get marketed and advertised. As an author, I write. I don't do all the marketing/advertising crap because I don't know the first thing about it.

Freedom is wonderful, as a writer, but it would be nice to have access to these other aspects as well. However, if I was faced with the possibility of another dead-end 9-5 job? I think I'd rather drown myself in a vat of sulphuric acid, in all honesty. Freedom is more important than money.