Here’s the Truth: Staying Published is like Spending Twenty Years on Survivor

or I'm Getting Tired of Swimming Back to the Island

(Warning: Content May Be Harmful to Unpublished Writers)*

Posted by Kate Flora

I appreciated Elizabeth Becka’s honest post last week because, for most us, there are too many reasons not to tell the truth. Most of those reasons are obvious: we don’t tell the truth because this publishing world we inhabit is a very small one, and we don’t want to say or do anything which might have a negative impact on our ability to survive as a published writer and continue to have our books published, sold and read. The agent, editor or publisher who has broken our hearts, destroyed our egos, or treated us shabbily today might bid for one of our books tomorrow, or lunch with someone bidding for our books or considering taking us on a client, or mention what a pain in the rump we are to someone we are heartily hoping will be our ticket out of the midlist slough.

So we smile and say “Thank you” even when we want to beat our heads against the table and weep or scream in frustration that we cannot create the kind of partnerships with our publishers which will help us sell books. We smile and say, “No problem” when we cannot learn our pub date so we can plan author events, or can’t learn the size of the print run, or learn that our print run is so small we’ll never do more than earn out our small advance. We murmur politely when we’re frustrated that we can’t see the cover copy or the cover design or when we can’t get a copy of the cover in a timely fashion so we can print the postcards we’ll pay for and mail or the bookmarks we’ll pay for and distribute. We nod agreeably when we’re advised to have a content-rich web site, which we must pay for. We ask for content suggestions when we’re told to create a newsletter, which means time away from our writing to write about ourselves or find other topics of interest to draw readers to our personalities as well as our writing.

We don’t tell the truth because we’ve already beaten the odds in so many ways just getting to the point where our book is in print that we know we ought to feel lucky, even when it feels to us like we’re spectacularly unlucky. We don’t tell the truth, which is that after spending a year or two writing the best book we can, we don’t make enough money from the book to live in a cardboard box.

We don’t tell the truth because we don’t want to negatively influence our readers. Many readers want to believe that we’re special, set-apart, the chosen ones, the amazing people who, through the exercise of expansive imaginations and incredible discipline, have managed to create entire worlds into which they can escape. Actually, this is true. What we don’t say is that, having done all this at great expense of emotion, intellect and time, as well as great delight, we can’t make a living. I have never yet given a talk to a school group without being asked if I am rich.

We also don’t tell the truth because we don’t want to discourage aspiring writers. We don’t want to cloud their dreams of publication, the anticipated joy of holding a printed book in their hands and the wonderful pleasure of knowing that someone has read and enjoyed the book. We have all been there at that moment and know how sublime it is. We don’t want to color their daily striving toward a great piece of fiction with all the other reality that comes with being published, so we talk about the upward trajectory of their careers as well as the unending trajectory of learning the writer’s craft. It is never mastered; it is always an exciting process of discovery. We don’t tell the truth about the pain of having a beloved series dropped when we still have an emotional and story-telling life with that character. We don’t tell the truth about how painful it is to have a agent say they’re giving up because no one is interested in the book. We don’t talk about the dark days when we wonder if we should just give up, go back to an earlier career, or simply wander out to play in traffic.

We try not to talk about the pain. The heartbreak. The stunning blows to our egos and our self-esteem. We try not to talk too much about how it feels to come back from the mailbox with the rejection letters we’re paid to have mailed to ourselves. To get the cover letters we slaved over for weeks back with “No Thanks” scribbled in pencil on the top, just above the coffee stain. We try not to talk too much about how tired our arms get when we’ve been voted off the island and insist on swimming back.

My career, if something so iffy can be called a career, has been like a rollercoaster. I spent ten years in the unpublished writer’s corner, stubbornly refusing to give up while I learned to write ever better books. When I sold my first book, it was actually my fourth. It was a three-book contract, and I had been toiling alone and unrecognized for so long that I was working on my sixth book when I signed the contract. Since then, I’ve gone through the lovely period when I thought I’d made it, when I had a book a year, and a series of contracts. I’ve had the “big” book that had foreign sales and was an audio book and a book of the month selection, that didn’t earn out and made me an untouchable in the world of New York publishing. I’ve waited three years for a publisher to bring out a series book, worrying that all my fans were dying off, only to have the book come out in hardback the week after Christmas, then been told that the sales were so bad there would be no paperback.

I’ve had an agent quit the week my book came out. I’ve had an agent I adored tell me that I needed to writer “bigger books” only to respond to my question: “Who writes a bigger book that I could use as a model?” with John Grisham and Robertson Davies. A decade later, I am still trying to triangulate a place between these two authors where I might be located. I’ve had an agent who couldn’t spell my name or the name of my character. I’ve had an agent who taught me an incredible amount about rewrite and made me a much better writer, but could never sell a book.

We try not to tell the truth about our status. Being an author without an agent or a contract is a lot like having a bad case of body odor. As soon as people get close to the truth, they move along. There’s not a lot of cachet in being a failure. I’ve sold my last four books myself. One of them was nominated for an Edgar. One of them got starred PW and Booklist reviews. I like to take this as evidence that I’ve still got some talent as an author.

Recently, in the shower, I had the radical thought: Maybe I don’t have to do this anymore. Since that day, I’ve been trying to figure out what “this” is. I’m as passionate about writing today as I was when I sat down and wrote my first novel almost twenty-five years ago. I have two books coming out this year: Stalking Death, my seventh Thea Kozak mystery and The Angel of Knowlton Park, my second Joe Burgess book. I’m deeply into my third Joe Burgess police procedural, have begun the research for another compelling true crime, and have the plots for my next Thea Kozak mystery and a screenplay. I’m as passionate about story telling as I was on the day a quarter century ago when I opened a blank page and typed: Chapter One. Maybe more passionate.

I love talking at libraries and I love teaching writing and I love talking to aspiring writers about craft. So maybe that isn’t it, either. Maybe “this” is spending so much time worrying about whether I have a career and all the “other stuff” I try to do to build a fan base. Maybe “this” is all my anxiety about My Space and Blogging and video trailers and handouts and all the trappings of the business of writing. Maybe “this” is all the energy that goes into trying to be a bigger success (or any kind of a success) instead of recalling the time when it was just me and the blank page and the power of imagination.

So maybe “this” isn’t giving up writing. The truth is that I’m tired of feeling discouraged. I’m tired of feeling like a failure at promoting myself. I’m tired of writing really good books and getting nowhere. I’m tired of being so worried about success and promotion and where I ought to be that I lose all the joy I get from writing. So the truth is that maybe what I have to do is just go back to where I started and write, and write, and write.

Because there’s one final truth and that is that for most of us, writing isn’t a choice. It’s a compulsion. We could no more stop writing than we could start now and hold our breaths forever. Eventually we'd turn blue and pass out. When we awoke, we'd head for the keyboard and start writing again.

*My fellow bloggers made me include this warning.

And for those of you who are always looking for an interesting story idea, here’s this week’s tip: Today via e-mail, the following spam arrived: Got unused cemetery plots you’d like to sell? Visit Graveguru.com. Just think of the possibilities.

Comments

[Laura K]

Well, if it counts, I'm glad, as a reader, that you've stuck it out.

The real question is one of defining "success" for yourself. For me, I look at you as "successful" because you write good books and I can get my mitts on them to read. (As in, they're not ebooks, which I can't read at all!)

The promotional stuff is all about financial success. I don't have an answer to how to come to a different definition of success for yourself if you don't go with the standard "if I have an X-dollar contract, I'm a success". I know I am still working on it in every aspect of my life, business, writing, personal, everything.

But dangerous to them or not, unpubbed authors need to understand the nature of the path they're setting out on. So, speaking as a reader *and* a writer...thanks.

[Susan Helene Gottfried]

You know, I read these truths -- and they ARE the truths, whether or not we like them -- and I wonder why we continue to play this game. Do the benefits outweigh the negatives?

I'm still trying to decide.

[Kenna]

Thank you so much for your honest rendition of what it is to be a 'published' author! I've gathered a few rejections myself as a (very) unpublished author; entered a contest (didn't make it past first round); gathered some great comments to help me become a better writer; and am already questioning whether the publishing grail is worth pursuing!

I'm considering my path forward on my writing 'career' (if it can be called such a thing) while continuing with my grinding, money-making career (a real trick, given that I'm still trying to have a personal life!). I'm not to the point where I'm willing, or able, to let the writing career take over, but the compulsion to write gets stronger as time goes by. And you are absolutely correct - it is a compulsion!

Again, thanks for your honesty - definite food for thought for a newbie author. Think I'll probably remain unpublished for quite a long time!!

[Elizabeth Becka]

Thanks, Kate, for reminding us we're not alone, even if we feel like it at times. I'm looking forward to meeting you at the South Lee County Library next Monday!

[Helen Ginger]

An amazing post, Kate. I want to print it out and hang it on my wall. Yes, it is partly a warning to unpublished writers, but at the same time, it's uplifting and encouraging in its honesty.

[Sandra Parshall]

Kate, before my first book was published (it was actually the seventh or eighth book I'd completed and tried to sell), I joined Toastmasters to try to get over my fear of speaking in public. My "mentor" there told me I must NEVER tell anyone that I'd written books I couldn't get published, because "nobody wants to hear about failure." But I've learned that it helps aspiring writers to hold on if they know others have been through the same rejections, depression, and hopelessness. So I don't pretend my "first" book sold instantly. I admit it was rejected by 20 NY editors before Barbara Peters at Poisoned Pen Press (upon whom I wish a million blessings) published it and it went on to win an Agatha. Publishing is a brutal business, and we need to be honest about it and spare aspiring writers from being blindsided.

[Lea Wait]

Bless you, Kate. A-men!

[Jan Brogan]

Kate,
This is a fabulous post--incredibly truthful and well-written. I often equate being a mystery writer to buying into a Ponzi scheme, and feel at the bottom of the hope pyramid. It was a joy to read your articulate explanation of my own own feelings. I also love talking to library and book store groups and teaching writing, and even like blogging, but there is something about the new emphasis on selling myself to every single person on the Internet that makes me feel both weary and disingenuous. Basically, I've decided I'd feel more comfortable selling hairbrushes door to door.

There is a great chapter in the book Freakonomics (Levitt/Dubner)that explains our plight in second-tier "glamour professions" like publishing. An enormous supply of people willing to work for nothing -- even finance their own work -- to buy into the dream. But the truth is that the profession can only support the dream for a tiny fraction of people.

But I know -- you don't want to stop people from dreaming! I ask myself the same questions you ask yourself -- without a definitive answer. I know I am one of the lucky ones, with three books out and another coming out next fall. But I think we set ourselves up for feeling like a failure by regarding this "compulsion" as a career. Lately, I've decided to think of it as a fun, and not-so-expensive hobby (at least compared to skiing).

I don't have a lot of answers, but I do know one thing-- I'm in the middle of Finding Amy and am sure glad that you had the hope and passion to write it. It's terrific!

Thanks again for this terrific post.

[Kate Flora]

I'm very moved by all the comments by my sister writers here. As many of you can imagine, this was a scary post to write. With a zillion aspiring writers waiting to take our places here among the published, we tend to avoid taking chances. Yet we've all taken the biggest chance of all, which is taking the chance on writing, with all of the challenges and the pain and the sweating blood over sentences. With all the days that we open yesterday's work and have to delete everything we've written because it's garbage.

For many people, taking the chance on writing doesn't come until middle age, when we finally reach the point where the passion for trying outweights the fear of failure. After all, if we never sit down and try, we've always got the dream.

I could have written many blogs about the passion, but having had that as yet unfocused epiphany in the shower (if, indeed, one can have an uncertain epiphany?), it felt like a topic we could have a dialogue about.

k.

[Doris Meredith]

Dear Kate:

I've never read an expose of my real feelings about "this" before. After nineteen books, numerous short stories, and several thousand book reviews (no exaggeration; I edited a book review column for over twenty years and for most of that time I was the only reviewer), I just want to crawl inside the world of my latest character and write. I'm tired of doing all my promotion at my expense with no help from the publisher. I'm tired of printing and mailing newsletters, posters and bookmarks. I don't want to blog, and I don't want to "pimp" myself on the Internet. I don't even have a website, although I'll apparently be forced into one. Geez, I almost wish for the 19th century and before where one can just write except there were no computers then, and I don't think I could survive without one.

Thank you for your report on the real world of writing. It relieves my feelings of paranoia that I was the only writer who saw the negative aspects of the publishing business. Not that being paranoid doesn't mean that no one's after us.

Thanks again, and I hear my character calling me back into his world to remind me that the first prequisite to success or self-fullfillment is to write a really, really good book.

Doris Meredith

[Hallie Ephron]

You've said a mouthful, Kate. And sometimes with my how-to book, I feel like a snake oil salesman. Then I meet someone who JUST SOLD HER FIRST BOOK(!) and I think, oh yeah, this is why we do it.

Two of my favorite writing quotes:
"Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness." (George Simenon)
"Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money" (Jules Renard)

- Hallie

[Patg]

Wow, Kate, talk about from the heart! A view we rarely get to see, because we tend to hold it all in so well. Thank you for your honesty and hope.
Patg

[Marilynne Smith]

Oh Kate! You know all the hidden dangers and have the nerve to point them out to those of us coming up the path. I really appreciate that.

I've been reading Sara Paretsky's "Writing in a Time of Silence."

You should read the last chapter if nothing else. I recommend you read it all because Sara's a great lady and a great writer.

She speaks plainly, with her full opinion of how things are, yet I was captivated by it all. If you take it as an autobiography, you can say it's about Sara in the world, how it shaped her, and how she fought it.

Good luck. I share your passion for writing, but I don't have the scars - yet.

Marilynne

[Kate Flora]

Marilynne,

I haven't read it yet, but I will. All those years ago, when I set out to write, I chose two mystery writers to be Thea's "literary Godparents." One was Dick Francis, the other was Sara.

Over the years, I've had the privilege of being on panels with Sara and of being part of the Sisters in Crime family, including following Sara into the presidency of the organization. She has always been one of my heroes.

k.

[Jackie Griffey]

Nuts! I'm too late-again. My heartfelt comment was going to be AMEN! But someone's already said it. I still love to write, in spite of all that and my sense of humor is alive and kicking too. Too bad I can't sell a screen play of my hard knocks to my funny bone and elsewhere without an agent. LOL.
Jackie Griffey who is still squeezing ink cartridges out of the grocery list.

[Leann]

Great job of summing up what has obviously struck a nerve with all of us, myself included. Sure, I signed a multi-book deal, but imagine what my face looked like when I was told--"We do want the first one, rewritten of course, but those other two you've already finished? Let's scrap them and do something different."

My jaw has yet to recover from the death drop. But I said, "Sure," and wrote four new books because of that passion you spoke of so eloquently.

Leann

[Barb Ross]

Kate-

What a wonderful post. I have so struggled with this--how not to turn something I love into something I hate.

I have a writing friend who writes beautiful, wonderful stories. He's retired and he writes every day. He takes classes and he strives to be better in his craft. He never submits. It's too painful, it's too distracting, it takes too much time from the thing he loves. I admire his confidence in himself and his lack of need for validation. He knows he's a good writer, probably he maintains that inner confidence more easily without people telling him he must do this or he can't do that to get into print.

Somedays, I look at it this way. Lots of people play golf. Every weekend. They invest in a lot of expensive equipment, vacations and club memberships. When they go out to play, they play the best round they can. They try to play with increasingly skilled foursomes. They take lessons and learn new techniques.

They never expect to play in the Masters or for that matter to get paid. Maybe they win a local tourney and get their picture in the paper or a plaque on the club wall. Even that is a bonus.

Some days, I view my writing that way. I don't feel embarassed when people ask what I am doing with my time. I don't feel the need to explain why I haven't met success in public terms. I'm happy.

Other days, I open the mail and oh, lordy. It's a bummer. I try to keep enough in circulation that it's never completely the end of the line with nothing out, because that might be the end of it.

What a balancing act. At the end of the day I am writing. I have never been able to stop--so I'm guessing I won't now. I have to cover my ears to the outside din and go on.

[JudyinBoston]

Kate,

Many of us feel your pain. There is a point when the brain understands that the definition of insanity is repeating the same act over and over while expecting different results.

An agent kindly explained last year that the only books of “new” authors that publishers were buying are thrillers and “cozy cozies.” If my so-called writing career were a book, this chapter would be what an instructor once called, “The Big Gloom,” where things can’t get any worse. But they can get worse. I could keep on expecting different results. I ran the maze of the corporate rat race for years, and this is worse. Corporate drones get a pay check.

When did something that used to be fun become pure hell?

I’ll continue to flog my three for sale novels until each has the requisite 100 rejections, but my new novel is not crime fiction, and neither will the subsequent story be. By the way, it’s wildly liberating not to have to drop a body in Chapter 1. There. I said it. Sometimes being truthful is also wildly liberating.

Switching genres, too, scary, but liberating.

[Vicki Lane]

Absolutely wonderful post! I teach a writing class and Always begin by telling my students the shocking (to them) truth -- for the vast majority of writers, signing a contract, even with a major publisher, doesn't mean you're going to be rich -- it doesn't even mean you can quit your day job.

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Two things. Okay, three.

1. What a heartfelt post. And it's rare that someone is courageous enough to break out of the oh-everything-is-wonderful mode. So thank you.

2. But listen. I remember when I first met you, several years ago, at Kate's Mystery Books. It was you, and Roberta Isleib, and Lynne Heitman, and Halile Ephron. I thought I was--oh, I don't know--meeting the Beatles.

I wasn't in the mystery writing world. I was a reader, a true reader, had read all of your books, and seeing you all, it felt like meeting a group of superstars. Your fans, your readers, who know nothing of your travails, only know they love your work and your talent. Don't forget that people like me are out there, admiring your skill and talent and having no idea of what's going on in the publishing world.

I'm just saying: there are real reading people who love you and your work, and always will, and that's never going to go away.

I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. But it's true.

3. Did you see the cover of the new New Yorker?