This blog.

When I look at the sidebar full of the years I’ve been writing on my own domain, writing about my life, my thoughts, and my feelings, I feel a little sad knowing I’m giving that up. My new blog won’t have that long sidebar going from July 2008 to October 2011 and beyond. It’s only been three years since I started blogging on perpetualsmile.net, and a little over a year since I started blogging on elizawhat.com, but it’s familiar. Going into the unfamiliar is scary, no matter what the situation. Essentially I am letting go of the ability to publicly express every thought and emotion, and replacing it with expressing only in the form of creative writing. I’m a good writer, because I can express myself using words. It’s always been my best form of communication. However, I’d much rather write and publicly share my stories. I know that to do so, I need to cut down on my distractions. I need to let go of my digital security blanket and open myself up to disciplined, daily creative writing.

I also know that in my new career of choice, no parent is going to want to find posts about depression and hemorrhoids when they Google my name before their child starts preschool.

What I know and what I feel are two different things, though.

I’m excited about this new adventure. I really am. And I know it’s okay to be scared, but that doesn’t make it any easier to let go.

Like I said, I’m a digital hoarder.

Still, I’ve made progress. I deleted — really deleted — my Facebook, deleted my Tumblr, deleted my Formspring, and deleted a couple of my extra Twitter accounts.

I’ve set up my new site (which I’ll be showing you soon). I’ve edited the first story I ever published. It was first published in a teeny, tiny publication called Fresh Ink at my community college, and I’m sure no more than one hundred people read it (probably even less than that, unfortunately). I’d like to share it with more people, because I’m proud of it. That story won a contest for me, a $100 gift card to Barnes and Noble, and a priceless compliment from a published writer. I read it yesterday before editing it and still felt proud of it (even though it needed a little more work). The ending still brought tears to my eyes. My own character broke my heart. (This is probably because I am overly sensitive.)

After my final round of edits, I created a cover for it. While I’m done with web design, I still love making graphics. Creating a digital book cover was a learning experience that I really enjoyed, even though it was literally a pain in the neck. (Thank goodness for Tylenol. I’ve been waking up every day with an achy neck.) Today I woke up without a sore neck, but still feel proud of what I accomplished yesterday. I know now that I can do it.

See, when ebooks first started becoming popular, I thought they were just a fad. I also thought they were a way for every man, woman, cat, and dog to put their unedited work out there. I cannot tell you how many technical ebooks I’ve read that, although helpful, were clearly thrown together the night before the writer posted them. I stayed away from most fiction ebooks, too, because I was a little afraid of what I might find.

But epublishing continued to become more popular, and slowly but surely, most people started to see that they needed to be a little more polished about it. De, a writer I met through Twitter, began to delve into epublishing about a year ago. I read as many of her posts on indie publishing as I could, and thought, That’s really cool. I watched her epublish her short stories and then publish a Choose Your Own Adventure type of book through a traditional publisher, and thought, Wow, I wish I could do that. Slowly, I began to see that epublishing could be a way to get your name out there, rather than waiting for someone to accept your story. Paired with traditional submissions, epublishing is just another way of getting your stories read and making people familiar with your name. In the last few weeks, I’ve been reading her posts and thinking, I wonder if I could do that. Now I want to try.

They say that everything happens for a reason. Things didn’t go well for me as a freelance or commercial web designer and social marketing consultant, but I learned a lot about online marketing. I learned enough to be able to market myself, which I’m going to need; indie epublishers don’t have big companies behind them to design their websites, design their book covers, set up book tours, and set up book reviews. It’s every woman or man for themselves, which is both frightening and exhilarating to me.

I think the reason I’m having such a hard time with walking away from this blog is because that means I have to face this scary and exciting thing without being able to run back. It’s been easy for me to write stories and novels and keep them to myself while putting my thoughts out there. I don’t know why I feel so vulnerable about my work but not about my feelings, but here we are.

I’m scared, but that’s okay. I’m only scared because this matters to me. My dream has always been to be a published writer, and this epublishing journey is the first step toward fulfilling that dream.