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Self-publishing - can building your own writing career path with www.lulu.com make you happier?
My first book from www.lulu.com arrived yesterday, self-published, and I have to say that the cover title of these articles referring to "happiness" not "riches" certainly applies to me today. Finding happiness on the slow path to a writing career can be done, but might involve a total lifestyle rethink and some profound sacrifices in order to acheive it- as in my experiences. I certainly felt a great thrill of achievement as I opened the brown parcel and saw my name on the shiny cover, but also a sudden simultaneous realisation that was just the start and not the end of my path to sell my book - I still have a long way to go in order to generate sales and that we all have to weigh up alternatives and make difficult choices about what really makes us happy - if writing makes us truly happy and we do not want to make our living any other way, we might have to give up other things, perhaps more trivial things. This is not so easy when it applies to the whole family.

In my case, I realised fairly early on that income would be minimal to begin with, but that writing was an area in which I had skills and which would give me the flexiblity of working at home, around a family which was willing to give me the chance to try. Quiet and beautiful natural surroundings were also important to me as conducive conditions in which to work - luckily the family had these as priorities too. Long working hours spent alone would be necessary in order to speed the process of the book along so that I could upload the files to lulu more quickly. Our spending would also have to be severely curtailed, as would my quality time and teaching time with our children. All in all, this meant no social life, no shopping, no holidays,no weekend breaks, no movies/theatre, frugal menus, no wardrobe additions, no luxuries except for the childrens music lessons. We decided to sell our home and buy a much smaller one in the countryside slashing our outgoings and giving our children village friendships and an almost unlimited natural playground to live in. After all, picnics and paddling are free!

Are we happier? Well, Boy do we love it here but we are still going without all the extras previously listed. We have reduced our stress levels and the children are happy to see their Mom so happy. Now, I just have to concentrate on studying the lulu site and making it work for me. I have got

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