Author Jeff Whelan [1] : Creativity & Family

"You seem very creative in your work but quite "down to earth" in your family life.  I wonder how you managed this.

          Balancing creativity and family life?  Fortunately, I've been blessed with a very creative family.  My wife makes beaded and wire jewelry, soaps, has dabbled in candlemaking and blogs about yoga.  Our 2 sons are brilliant - both have participated in summer theater camps for years, both love to write, they're wonderful artists and are now getting more serious about musical instruments (one the piano, the other the trombone).  On top of that, my wife and I are both active in our local community theater and perform in at least one production each every season.

          All that being said, bursts of inspiration and creativity are frequent around our house.  We're all avid readers and find inspiration in many places but most of all in each other.  In listening to my boys concoct their stories, I might have an idea jog loose that I can use somewhere else.  Or my wife or I might have an idea that will lend itself to their creations.

          In regard to my humorous, young adult science fiction adventure, Space Orville, though; that was finished right around the time our first son was born but I did not self-publish until December of 2011, having endured years of rejection from print publishers (whose almost unanimous opinion was that "humorous, young adult science fiction" was simply too narrow a niche to warrant print publication, i.e., they did not want to waste their precious resources on a book that would probably only be read by a handful of nerds looking for a few laughs).

          So, I suffered my mounting rejection letters like any good author - filed them away as I prepared the next query.  Then came the advent of self-publishing and, behold, there were readers!  And far more than just a handful of nerds at that.  These days, self-publishing is simply a matter of doing a little homework on formatting guidelines, taking time to follow them to the letter, then following the steps at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords or wherever for uploading your manuscript.  After that, it becomes a matter of shameless self-promotion to start finding readers for your work.  Finding the balance between that and family life has been the greatest challenge; I find myself sitting at the computer far more often and for far longer than I was ever comfortable before.  Nocturnal by nature, I am still stay up far later than I should just keeping the marketing machine rolling and find that I have too little time to do any of the substantial writing I would like to. I'm afraid a time is going to have to come soon where I hang up the marketing for a while and focus on my next work if I'm going to move beyond where I am right now.