Me and the Goblins: The Challenges of Writing a Book

Their footprints are everywhere.

They say writing the book is the difficult part.

But to be honest, once I threw out the rules that kept holding me back and found my rhythm, writing was no longer the problem.

Of course, it takes incredible focus to finish a story that reaches 450,000 words by the end. And of course, there are days when I curse my screen a million times over. But writing itself doesn’t cost me much. I could do it for years and never grow tired.

It is what comes afterwards that truly tests a writer’s resolve.

The design decisions. The publishing systems. Hardcovers, paperbacks and e-books. ISBNs and rented addresses. Social media and SEO.

That is where you decide how seriously you are going to take this.

And that is where you meet the little creatures I so lovingly call the goblins.

Small, Persistent Creatures Who Live to Ruin Your Day.

I could introduce every goblin as I encountered them, but that would take far too long. So I’ll name only a few.

The Map Goblin pushes a location name directly into the fold of your beautiful hardcover – the one that cost a fortune to have delivered to Austria and which you waited for with increasingly desperate impatience.

The Design Typo Goblin is born when your designer is not fluent in English.

The Scheduled Publishing Goblin arrives to inform you that just because you pressed Publish, it doesn’t mean your book is actually live.

Then there are the Page Count Goblins.

There are many of them.

They live inside your dashboards and regularly disappear on coffee breaks, forgetting all about the books that gave you twenty new grey hairs. Then they return when you least expect them and throw hundreds of pages at you. Sometimes they don’t remember that one of your books exists until halfway through the month.

Not because nobody is reading it.

Because they enjoy watching your face grow paler by the day.

The Algorithm Goblin… well, I know you have all met that one before.

And the Interior Design Goblin sends a random word halfway across the universe, just to check whether you are still paying attention.

The list is endless.

They Are The Stones Scattered Across The Path

They are the challenges of writing a book.

They are the stones scattered across the path.

Whatever you call those stones on your own road to success, they will find everyone who takes that first step beyond their comfort zone. Some will look like mountains. Some you will jump over. Some you will kick aside. Others will keep returning just when you finally think everything is all right.

They are inconvenient.

But I have also come to believe they are necessary.

Because every one of them teaches us something more effectively than simple success ever could. Each one asks us the same questions again:

Are you ready for this?

Are you still serious about it?

And once you answer those questions, again and again, every goblin you meet becomes a little less threatening. Every stone becomes a little lighter.

The Lessons Remain.

I can now push a book through the entire publishing process—whether it takes one test print or ten—without flinching. I can watch a social-media post fail without feeling as though the world is ending. I can look at a silent dashboard and merely wonder who is paying for all those goblin coffee breaks.

I can navigate design software, edit videos and improve SEO and marketing campaigns. I can register ISBNs. I can publish hardcovers, paperbacks and e-books.

I learned all of that, and so much more, during eight goblin-powered months.

So how much can I learn in another eight?

I cannot wait to meet all the goblins still waiting for me along the road.

And so I continue to visit them. I ask how many pages were read, whether a book was sold and if anyone beyond my immediate household saw yesterday’s post.

Sometimes they answer.

Sometimes they rearrange the numbers overnight.

And sometimes they sit in absolute silence while a reader messages me to say that Penumbria broke their heart.

That is when I remember that the goblins can only count what they can see.

They have never been particularly good at measuring what matters.