Learning To Dance

Years ago when I met Jerry Pournelle, I got him talking – I know this will shock all of my faithful readers – about Heinlein. He mentioned I live in the town where Heinlein lived for a long time. I knew that. I’d even ferreted out the true address, because the one in Grumbles From The Grave is wrong.

In fact, the house has been up for sale twice, but the price grazing the half million is much too rich for our blood. The house is near the Broadmoor, in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in town. I don’t think I’m giving too much away and at least the last owners had grown resigned to leading people through the house on impromptu tours. (I think they took down the distinctive number pictured in Grumbles, though, which is how I found it, one happy Spring morning, while driving the preschooler and the toddler to the zoo. (And I regret to report it my dears, but I made a total and absolute fool of myself, getting out of the car and standing on the road, touching the mailbox and crying. Yeah, okay, I’m a deranged fan as well as a writer. Though I’m happy to say I’m way too shy to EVER be a stalker. Also to stalk most of the people I’m that nutty on I’d need a time-travel machine or a ouija board.)

I confess I’d never thought very deeply about the location of the house, or its cost. I knew, having read Grumbles, that it had been built from scratch to their specifications, and since it was nigh to the only five star resort hotel in town, I assumed it was expensive even when built. I mean, the EARLIEST I remember being aware of such a thing as advances or how writers got paid (I think before that I had a nebulous idea writers were employees, hired by a company and put on salary to turn out x number of books a year – which, btw, might NOT be a bad model, if they’re going to be as bad as they are at tracking sales. Some of us would probably take write for hire for a book a year for a minimum of x and x years, provided we could write our own stuff on the side. Some of us have kids and obligations. More on this later.) was a notice in a Portuguese paper that Heinlein had got eight million dollars advance for Friday. So… expensive resort hotel… about right.

But Jerry said part of the reason they bought where they did was that the housing/land/living was cheap in Colorado Springs at the time. You see, the money didn’t come until much later than that. Until then they lived from book to book. They made do…

This is a continuous discussion at every con. The older writers complain about how bourgeois we’ve all become, and in fact there is something to be said about that, except I’m writing that article – hopefully – for publication. Meanwhile the truth is more than bourgeois, we’ve gotten older. People rarely break into the field in their twenties, anymore, or if they do they’re treated as darlings and have no worries. I’m one o the younger sf/f writers at any gathering, and I can see fifty nearing at speed. At our age we have families and obligations and we’re starting to think in terms of “how am I going to live in old age.”

I don’t know anyone under fifty who expects social security to pay them much, if anything at all. I view that money as being poured down a hole. If you think you’ll see a dime from it, you’re a far more hopeful person than I. It’s demographics. There is no lock box. There is no fund. There is a new generation paying for the older. Which works great if the new generation is bigger than the retiring one. AND all of them are employed and… Uh… you see the issue right? (Don’t blame me, I tried to have eleven children.) The way the market as been, both for me as a writer – yeah, I broke in in the quarter of 9/11 – and for my husband in tech, we have some money set by, in retirement funds we can’t touch, which would see us… through a year, I think. IF we’re extremely lucky.

Suffice it to say neither of us expects to retire. I intend to work as long as I can work, at writing, if writing will continue paying (something that as of now is up in the air, but being very stubborn and a battler I have hopes of figuring out a way) after the upheavals publishing is going through. At something else, if I have to. I can refinish furniture. I’m a decent seamstress. If all else fails I can teach and tutor in languages.

Dan, likewise, intends to die with his hands on the keyboard. How is somewhat of a puzzle too, since most companies these days actively discriminate against you once you hit fifty. (Yeah, I think it’s against the law too, but there’s always ways.) However we’ll figure it out.

But this type of life requires minimizing your living expenses, paying off the house, keeping things as cheap as possible.

And sometimes I feel guilty for having taken this path at all. You see, when we were twenty (it was just yesterday, I swear) it seemed so simple. I was going to write until I had a bestseller, which would happen with my first book (more on the lack of understanding of your own incompetence when you start out later) of course, and then I’d support Dan while he got his music going. Sometimes I think I should have gone back to school and gotten my AMERICAN teaching certificate, so that we’d have been a two income family all along. (I have a Portuguese teaching certificate but I wasn’t even allowed to take certification exams in the states. My diploma, from one of the oldest universities in Europe wasn’t accepted because the bureaucracy had never heard of it.)

But then I look at our friends who did what my husband arguably did, to keep a roof over our heads. They traded in their artistic dreams, their dreams of success at the thing they loved best for a steady income… Which for my generation hasn’t been all that steady.

Dan’s career in tech through the tech bubble and the turmoil of contracting has hardly been a sinecure.

With all that – lest I seem to be whining – we’re probably in better shape than 80% of our generation. Even if we’re eating into our savings at a prodigious rate.

What is this all about, you ask? Well… Yesterday I was talking to my older son who is in pre-med and we were discussing the uncertainties attending their future, and it occurred to me, truly, that there is no safe option. In the years of accelerating technological change we’re facing, there is no career you can enter and be safe forever and ever.

Everywhere I turn, even my dentist, talks about tech that will end his job as he knows it.

So what is my advice to you bright hopefuls setting out on the glory road of writing?

1- If that’s what you really want to do and are willing to starve for it, do it. Trading in on a “real” career won’t keep you any safer. (A caveat is since I don’t approve of living off other people, be they your parents or the taxpayers, get a part time job to support your writing habit. But treat it as a way to support your writing habit, not as a career. There is a difference.)

2 – Don’t expect a bestseller right away. I know, the world cowers before your brilliance. Or at least your cat and your boyfriend cower before your brilliance, which is why, my dear, we’ve told you to stop using soap with glitter in it. BUT weirdly and more than ever now, brilliance alone isn’t enough. Luck and above all persistence come in. Be prepared to be persistent. What this means in practical terms is that you MIGHT need that part time job and a place to live other than mom and dad’s basement. Beware you might be in your late thirties by the time you even break in. This seems to be the median age for breaking in now. (Though that might change with digital self-publishing.)

3 – Once you made the decision, keep on keeping on. I wasted ten years, writing a novel then going back to work full time, then writing another novel, ensuring both my skills and knowledge of the field grew VERY slowly.

4- Through realities out of our control – demographics; the pace of technological change; other factors that would be posts in themselves – most of us now under fifty will spend the rest of our lives in times of high uncertainty, aka “interesting times.” So there is no safe place to hide. In publishing or anywhere else, you’re going to fall on your face very often. The question is “how fast can you get up?”

Over my computer I have to signs pinned. One says “Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.” (General George S. Patton.) It went up in 2003, when the failure of my first series seemed to ensure I’d never again be published. The second went up a few years later, when I lived in fear of trying new genres and new styles because… what would people think of me? And what if I failed. But then I realized I’d already failed once by playing it as safe as I could. And I saw other people failing around me all the time, for the same reason. That sign says “If you must walk on thin ice, you might as well learn to dance.”

All publishing is FOREVER thin ice. It was when Heinlein was publishing. It is now. Like all the arts it will probably always be. The other professions are just moving towards us.

So, as you stand there, on your thin ice and take a little experimental step, think on this:

5 – One day you will die, as every human will. Maybe you’re lucky. Maybe death will come suddenly, with no time for regrets or second thoughts. Most people are not that lucky these days, though. There are sometimes years of laying in bed, unable to do much but think over the past.

In that final and terrible time, what will weigh most on you? That you never had a corporate career? Never took expensive vacations? Never got to be a great: doctor, engineer, salesman, cook? If any of these is true, go and pursue those. If you love anything more than writing, go in peace – and whistle as you go, you’re a free person.

But if you’re going to lay there, on your death bed, regretting the worlds and characters that will die with you, unknown to the rest of humanity, come back here and sit down, you’re my brother or my sister even if I never met you. Arrange your life so you can live while creating. And set your nose to the grindstone.