Mother I’m Frightened, The Thunder and the Lightning

Years ago, when I was just starting to figure out the writing thing, I attended Kris Rusch’s and Dean Wesley Smith’s Master Class (which they no longer teach, though they teach other classes, useful in the current situation) in Oregon.

One of the things they told me which I didn’t fully believe was “You never outgrow problems, in writing. You just trade in for bigger problems.”

This seemed like duck speak. I mean, at some point you become a professional. That problem you have, on how to start a story? It goes away. And besides, you’re selling practically everything you write. What can you possibly worry about?

Perhaps my biggest fear at the time was that I wasn’t a real writer. No, please, don’t ask me to explain. It doesn’t make sense to me, even now. Perhaps it was that so many people at parties, so many arbiters of other people’s lives informed me “you’re not published, so you’re not a real writer.” Perhaps it was my mom’s more or less constant refrain of “when are you going to quit the writing non sense and concentrate on something real?” Perhaps it was that when I was little writers were some sort of heros. They lived in another country, and you know, everything was easier there.

It never occurred to me, to be honest, that any of the people I admired were once, themselves, unpublished and that some of them – Bradbury – wrote a lot before he could break into publishing. No. In my mind, the “real writers” always knew how good they were. Which left me as a fraud and a put-on. And so no one was ever going to buy me.

Nineteen years ago, when the older boy was little, I used to go for walks with him in his pram, and think about stories, but also day dream about the day that would never come, when I was published, and no longer had to worry about whether I really was a writer. I remember vivid wishing that myself from the future would just come back and tell me I was published. It would make everything so much easier, without the constant doubt.

Shortly after that workshop (actually at the workshop, in the editor-pitch-session) I sold my first book. So, did the heavens open? Did the angels sing?

No. I knew it was a mistake. Not mine. Theirs. They’d made a horrible mistake, I was a fraud, and soon they’d find out.

Weirdly what cured this was my first series collapsing. Here is was. The worst had happened. When, despite that, I kept selling, I coined the term Zombie Career TM and forged on.

But the fear was always – as has been for most midlisters for the last ten years – that I’d never sell again. The only way to keep writing involved not thinking about sales, but thinking instead about the things that mattered: how well written the book was; how much promo I did (I did a LOT for Darkship Thieves, for instance); cherishing the fan letters and the fans in my conference.
The fear of not selling again is gone. Or rather, it’s oddly twisted, sideways and backwards.

I think at this point, ten years in, and with some regular fans, what I should be worrying about is never making it to bestseller. Or perhaps that my particular brand of writing will stop. (Okay, guys, yeah, that’s silly for me, since I write so many different genres, but it is vital for many people. When Horror collapsed it left a lot of stranded writers.)

But instead, here are my fears right now and what I’m doing to counter them. (Is it enough? Who knows. I’ll do more as it occurs to me.)

1 – That I’ll never be a bestseller because there won’t be such a thing as a bestseller list.

Answer: Who cares? Some bestseller lists, done a certain way, are real measures of success. However a lot of bestseller lists are cooked and reflect either laydown or customer confidence. So, who needs them? The only real bestseller list is reflected in bank accounts. Which brings us to:

2- What if my name recognition/fan base/publicity efforts aren’t enough, and I end up not being able to make even the little living I’ve made at this for the last few years?

Answer: Other people are making a living, so there’s a way to. Promote more. Research the market more. Write more. Establish different sources of income. Subscriptions. Donation buttons. Non fiction. Anything else I can think of. Meanwhile cherish the publishers I mean to keep working with, and keep my fingers crossed behind my back. Finding a way not to sleep or to write while asleep would help, too.

3 – What if my favorite publisher goes under? What if my favorite novel-under-contract gets trapped in publishing h*ll due to bankruptcy or lawsuits? What if something horrible happens and I can’t possibly self-publish or go small press? What if traditional publishers somehow pull a double-reverse and they’re the only ones that survive, and we’re back to the state before all this, and I’ve blown it by firing my agent and going indie?

Answer – The unknowable is the unknowable. And right now no one KNOWS everything for sure. Yeah, we could all die tomorrow, buried in ash. Or publishing in all its forms could stop existing, which means I can default to cleaning houses for a living or something. Meanwhile, I do the best I can. I keep up with changes and try to second guess the best I can. And if it all goes wrong? Well, I’ve been at the bottom before. I’ll come around again.

And what would I tell my younger self, if I could go back? Would I tell her that I’m published, I’m a real writer? Would I tell her not to be afraid?

No. Who knows? Perhaps my/her fear was necessary to keep writing.

Would I give her specific advice that worked then? Like, “do more cons.” Or “participate in Genii boards online”? I don’t know. If I’d gone that route, I could have ended up in a different place career wise. Yes, yes, I could have been amazingly wealthy and successful. Or I could have been unpublishable and blacklisted years ago.

So, what would I tell my younger self? If I could, I would send back in time the print outs that I have pinned to the corkboard to the left of my desk. One of them says “If you must walk on thin ice, you might as well learn to dance.” The other has a General George s. Patton quote: “Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.”