Postmortem - My Wife Sucks

Contains spoilers and strong language.

My Wife Sucks is a romantic comedy I wrote in 2020, featuring a lawyer, Oliver Anderson, who wants nothing more than to win his wife's heart back...even though he doesn't know how.

I'd never written a romantic comedy before and honestly, I was just looking to make a romance that I would read.

Because the book is 100% dialogue, it pretty much wrote itself. I managed to get the entire book written and self-published within 2 months, which is not only the fastest I've ever written a book, it's the most I've ever enjoyed writing a book. Publishing, however, was rough. Not everything went as smoothly as it went the first time, I had issues with my file sizes, I experimented with epubs for no reason at all. If anyone ever offers to convert your file into an epub, just laugh and walk away. Seriously, all you ever need is a pdf and a docx. But yeah, it did feel good to get the first draft done in a week.

Another hard part of writing this one was the criticism, because I always say I'm my harshest critic. I had my beta-readers flying through the pages begging me for the next part, while I was saying things like "this is so unfunny". "This isn't romantic enough." "I want the first chapter re-written by tomorrow". And it took a lot of balance to get enough of what I wanted while still listening to the feedback people were giving me. I didn't really have any reason to re-write the first chapter, people loved it and found it hooked them, but I was getting into obsessive perfectionist habits, looking for the perfect joke and the perfect hook...it was me being over-ambitious and learning to pinpoint exactly what I wanted before I deleted anything.

Shitty romances, friends that kept getting into shitty relationships, and once when I was in a bar near my old university, I met a girl that told me to write a book, because she would read it. It's the first thing I've written that merges my wants with the desires of the people around me. It felt good to just get it out the way, especially since I'm not the most comforting person when it comes to dealing with upset people. This lets me comfort people by letting them choose heightening their romantic feelings way above the negative emotions and letting them laugh instead of cry. I think that's important, particularly this year, seeing how loud you can laugh.

I can't even look at the book without feeling all queasy inside because the cover art is DIVINE! I've spent so long blogging about how amazing this cover artist was, because she was able to make that without asking any questions! Just saw the brief, read my mind, created something perfect for me. Which I think is such a big deal because I pride myself on being unpredictable. My first cover artist was also great, but he couldn't read minds so...

As for sales, I don't think they'll be as good as the next book's. No offence to My Wife Sucks but I'm working on something a lot more unpredictable that makes me excited in a really good way. I would give the currently available books away for free because I want everyone to read them regardless of money, but that's kinda bad for business, so I think I'll make the books free when I'm in a better position to.

And personally, writing this book changed my perspective a lot. I have a different impression when I listen to music or look at people now, because this book helped me see life as something that needs balance. I learnt a lot about myself, how I think. And it helped me decide which direction my writing journey is going to take me. I also think writing comedy helps me deal with the depressing side of 2020 because instead of letting life get me down, I just write a joke and raise a middle finger, which feels SO much better. I also think it helped me pin down why I want to be a writer and not a comedian, because with this book, the comedy is a product of the romance and that's what I want, to produce comedy by making people think. Smart comedy.

I love everyone that helped me through this book. I am so glad that everyone I know has taken covid-19 seriously enough to keep themselves and their families safe and I am so looking forward to having a good year next year. It feels so good to have fans that appreciate the art as much as you do and I hope to find many more inspiring artists as I journey on into the future.

But yes, publishing this was more stressful than Rule 250. I wouldn't have so many gray hairs if KDP didn't confuse Microsoft docx files for pdf files and Google Docs had custom page sizes.