Gradients

In time, I'll write a more extensive history of how this project came to be, and how long it's taken (years).

There have been a number of slopes during this process, mostly ones viewed from the bottom. Obviously the first and biggest is 'learning how to write this story in a vaugely competent fashion' accounting for both technical capacity and narrative structure. 

Ironically, it seems - looking backwards, from atop this latest gradient - that was the easiest one. Or at least the one that was easiest to understand. It was a fixed problem; in essence a skill issue and one which I possessed at least the outline of a paradigm for. 

But then the slopes of learning how to ask the right questions about reviews, editing, cover art, more editing, file conversions, the intricacies of KDP... all of which have felt like they required dragging myself up some slope or other. There were always more steps, always another thing that had to be done before the false summit. 

But now, with the final files being prepared and converted, and with the next phase being to actually send the final product out into the world (admittedly for early ARC) then it all feels very real; akin to being atop of a suddenly-steep slope that plunges into the unknown. Up to this point it wasn't real; the project could always have been abandoned and all it would have cost was time and money and effort. All of which could have been discarded as sunk cost to protect the real cost - which was and is self. But soon comes the Rubicon, where it will be impossible to pretend any more that this isn't something I care about.

But then again, any story worth telling has to have a bit of the author in it. And I've not come all this way to not see the thing realised, even if it's out of contrariness.