Author Allen M Werner

I published ‘Beautiful’, the 5th and final book in my first book series, The Crystal Crux, in November of 2023. It was exciting to complete it and reach the end. It was a lot of work but rewarding all the same.
But now it’s onto the next book, or series, or whatever it turns out to be (right now it looks as if it will be a single volume standalone book).
And in pursuit of the proper words and story direction to write this new book, I often find myself doubting what I wrote before. I sometimes wonder if I have the words and skills to actually write another book and I hate feeling like this.
But I think authors in general, as well as artists of all disciplines, live with the shadowy compulsion to second-guess ourselves. It feels like a strong and omnipresent wraith circling overhead waiting to pounce, wanting to silence us and squash our imagination and spirit.
No matter what I do with the new book, I keep revisiting misgivings I have about the first five books even though they are done and published. I still see and hear certain phrases and sentences in my head and question whether or not I could have written them another way, a better way.
I’ve been blessed to sell my self-published books on five continents and in over a dozen countries but still have yet to achieve a large following or even a decent number of reviews. People have all kinds of reasons for purchasing books but not reviewing them.
And this inability to find a larger audience is where some of the uncertainty stems from.
Is it me? Is it the way I write? What could I have done differently? Is it the story? The genre?
And then, like a ray of sunshine, I am blessed to start reading a book published by a publishing house that I don’t care for.

Now, you may ask yourself why reading a book you don’t like is a blessing. Here’s why.
People liked this book.
Somewhere, in some office building in some tiny office, there was a decision made by some very smart people in the literary world to publish this book. They thought it had enough potential to invest in it.
And here I am reading it and not liking it.
And that’s the key to all these apprehensions.
We can always learn to do better, to write better, to craft stories better, but no matter how talented we become at our art, it will never be good enough for most people.
Let me show you some examples.
These are real reviews you can find online.

Fellowship of the Rings by JR.R. Tolkien
3 stars… It’s very long and dry reading that gets tiresome after a while and obviously show not tell was something Tolkien ever knew or cared about…
3 stars… Too many character names… too much reference to previous histories… far too many place names… so many run-on sentences…
3 stars… I didn’t enjoy Tolkien’s writing style…

War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy
3 stars… but it is soooo long and there are soooo many characters to keep track of and looong boring sections….
3 stars… Being that the high points are few and far, I did have to trudge through this mammoth work…

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
3 stars… I liked this story. But it has some nagging flaws… I am bothered by poor/incorrect details, inconsistencies and excessive repetition…
3 stars… There are predictably some irksome things about the writing. First of all, why are people murmuring all the time? She murmured this. He murmured that. Someone is murmuring something to someone else on every single page…

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
3 stars… It is better suited for older readers with longer attention spans…
3 stars… It is a relatively difficult read and I often found myself struggling to stay attentive to it…
3 stars… It is very, very long winded. It runs on at times to the point where it’s almost incomprehensible…

I chose to focus on 3 star reviews because I figure people who give 3 star reviews are being honest about having read the entire book and not caring for it.
I always figured that people who bother to post 2 and 1 star ratings probably didn’t finish the book, probably should have stopped if they disliked it that much, have a petty peeve with the author, the story or the subject that gnaws at them, or they received merchandise that was damaged like missing pages or a corrupted ebook.

I recently started reading an epic swashbuckler published by Pyr in 2009, and I can’t finish it. This would be a 2 star review if I were to finish it. I like certain elements of the story, but the writing is bland and the characters flat and unimaginative. I don’t hate any of them. I don’t love any of them. I can’t hardly remember their names or separate one from another. About 80 pages in and I don’t care.
But somewhere, at one time, in some office building and some tiny office, some very smart people read this manuscript and thought it had potential. And they invested in it and published it.
I don’t fault any of them in this. But it serves to soothe my anxieties concerning my own work.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard when it came to producing art is that the artist has to love their own work.
Yes, we have muses and other external motivations but at the end of the day, we must be pleased with what we have accomplished.
And after reading some of this published book that I really didn’t like, I went back and re-read some of my own work and was fully immersed and pleased with it. I didn’t get hung up on any of the words, or sentences, or phrases. It said what I wanted it to say.
And that’s all that matters.
Tolkien, Tolstoy, James and Bradbury have found success, and they have critics for there will always be critics. There will always be people who will say your writing are too long winded, or your writing is no good, or you shouldn’t phrase things this way or that way.
They don’t like your book or your art. So what?
There are critics for Tolkien, Tolstoy, James and Bradbury. There will be critics for you. In their eyes, your work won’t measure up.
Don’t focus on them.
Don’t even focus on what you have accomplished.
Look forward. Work on that next project and write or create something you can be proud of.
You’re going to put your name on it after all.
Let it be something you really believe in and can stand behind.

Allen M Werner is the author of the epic fantasy series
The Crystal Crux.