In Which The Author Acquires Ice Cleats

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’m running as fast as I can.  It might not look like it, when I spend most of my day at the keyboard, but inside I’m running.

Right now, my life has very set times and places.  This will probably change, if/when the kids leave home starting next year.  But right now I wake up at six thirty am to make sure that they get  breakfast and don’t rush out the door with no lunch.  (Look, if I’m not there to make sure, they don’t eat.)

Then I do the absolute necessary (usually catboxes!) around the house, if I’m not going Officeish (usually Wednesdays and Fridays.)  If I’m going officeish, I run up the stairs to shower and get ready, since my ride leaves by seven thirty.

In either case, I sit down by eight or so, do the blog if I haven’t done it before, then write till around three thirty, when I must start doing dual duty again, by starting dinner, doing laundry and whatever else needs it.  Yeah, the guys do stuff around the house (and other extracurricular stuff, too) but ultimately I do most of it because I’m better at it.

If I am still compus mentis, I edit in the evening, most of the time for myself, sometimes for NRP where I’m supposed to edit some of the authors (mostly my friends.)  To this I’m adding editing my own old stuff and putting it up with Goldport Press.  And I try to get to bed by eleven.

Around this fits stuff like birthdays, the occasional weekend away, and yeah, I do consider a walk in the park with my husband an amazing treat.

Now, before you tell me that I’m going to burn out, remember I’ve done this with variations (no officeish till last year, no putting stuff up, no NRP but other stuff I was doing instead) for a good six years.  I’m actually less burned out now than before, and will probably feel a whole lot better next year.

Why next year, you ask?  Because next year I’ll be largely out of contracts.  Does this mean I don’t intend to traditionally publish anymore?  No.  I’ve said before and will say it again that I’ll work for Baen while they want me to.  (I’d say till death do us part, but they’re a corporation and can’t die.  And some people have doubts about me.)  BUT I’m changing the way I’m working with them in the way I’ve wanted to for YEARS but didn’t dare: I’m writing everything on spec, sending in, and letting them decide if they want it or not then.

Until this year, this was not a feasible strategy.  Why not?  Because I have a really high sell-through rate on proposals for a working writer – I sell between fifty and seventy five percent of every proposal I write.  See where that’s not a practical way to live, if I’m only selling fifty to seventy five percent of every NOVEL I write?

But now that’s not a consideration.  If there are things they don’t want to publish, then I’ll bring them out myself.  I have yet – save for one, and that was not from Baen, and it sold to someone else – to get a rejection on any of my books that cites a flaw with the book.  Most of them say something like “we have too many of ” or cite reasons that the editor doesn’t like it that have to do with the editor not the book.  Like the famous “Your woman wasn’t assertive enough” – I’ll leave it as a class exercise to imagine how assertive my female character was, and how insane that comment is.

Add to that that I hate writing proposals and that this is incredibly stressful to me, because once the characters come alive it’s wrenching to have to let them die while I move on to something else and leave that book unfinished.  Yes, I know that’s crazy, but that’s how it feels.  Also my proposals usually fell like I’m groping around looking for a plot, which is largely true, since I don’t plot THAT way and therefore don’t know all the twists before I write the novel.

Now I don’t have to deal with that.  And I don’t intend to.  Baen will get all my DST-time books, and all my shifter books, and perhaps others I think are up their alley, depending on how many books they have in cue, and what I want to be seen when (the idea of having control over this is by the way amazing.)  I might even send some books other places, if I don’t think they’re right for Baen.

But in either case, it won’t matter.  If the traditional publishers won’t publish them, I’ll find other ways to bring them out.

Now, consider that writing a book a month is not difficult for me (and that’s taking weekends off) but that what’s been stopping me are the months of self-doubt in between, when I sit in front of the keyboard and not a word emerges.

If you subtract those months, it will look like I’m working harder.  But I’ll actually be relaxing more.

So, no matter what it looks like, over the next year I intend to keep running.  But this time, not on ice.  Or at least, I’ll get me some cleats.

15 thoughts on “In Which The Author Acquires Ice Cleats”

  3. What you describe (very much like Dean Wesley Smith, only without his numbers) is what I’m hoping more of my favorite authors will realize. They can write the books they want, when they want, have more books available, and get more enjoyment out of their careers. Writers and readers both win. More power to you!

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  4. As all this translates into more cool stuff to read…I’m happy! Just make sure to get out of the veal pen every once and a while. Til then Good Luck!! Can’t wait to see what brilliant things the gatekeepers rejected.

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  5. FYI – I also find no problem writing a novel a month. I wrote my 240k monster in about 3 months and that was only on a few hours a night. There is of course a critical difference between my stuff and yours.

    Your stuff isn’t crap.

    But I have high hopes that if I shovel enough fertilizer, something good will grow and then someday I will be able to turn out several novels a year.

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  6. What you describe sounds like the mental journey one takes when they learn how to be self-employed. It starts with the work (in your case, writing) but then a shift in one’s thinking occurs. For lack of a better description, one starts to think like the boss; refining their work process towards more efficiency, and amplifying all the little ways which bring one greater success.
    I’ve been self-employed for almost 20 years, and I am still find ways to make it work better, and pay more. I’ve learned to take a hard dispassionate look at each problem that arrises, and then use that knowledge to change my business relationships to better suit my needs. Its not always about money either. I might raise my rate for one client, but only do a different starting time for another.
    For some reason I find this process takes all the angst out of working long hours. Its as if once I have done my very best to profit from selling my precious time, everything else becomes easy. And at the end of the day, it is all about maximizing my precious time.

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    1. Yes, you nailed it. OF COURSE technically I’ve been self-employed for over a decade, but since there was a tight control by others of what production of mine actually showed up to the public, this was not … necessarily so. And the shift you describe is very much what I’m doing mentally. What’s weird is that I’m looking at this mountain of work and, for the first time in over a decade, feeling… relaxed?

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      1. It’s been my experience that self-employment is often more work, but because the variables are in your control, not nearly as harrowing.

        If I lost a client as a designer I could hustle and get another one, I knew what to do, even if it was hard. Right now I’m at the mercy of the Texas State Higher Ed Coordinating board. Who knows if I’ll have a program to teach at in two years?

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      2. “Studies have shown” that a major source of stress is critical variables outside your control; it is simply more stressful to have little say in the success of your efforts.

        I have long believed, OTOH, that true happiness consists of being able to sell your excrement, to be able to profit from that which you do as a natural byproduct of living the life you wish.

        You are going to write even if none of it sells, even if none of it ends up on paper (or pixels or whatever). By moving to an attitude of “I will write what interests me and find a market for it afterward” you are moving from the first circumstance to the second. Congratulations.

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        1. well, I know that’s not what you meant, but I still don’t like the likening writing to excrement. I mean, I do have some cr*p in the diskettes, which will NEVER see the light of day, not even under deep pen name. There is a slight difference too. Would I still write if it didn’t sell? Probably. For a given definition of writing. The problem is that writing not-for-sale tends to turn completely amorphous, at least for me. It’s a shapeless thing, without rhyme or reason. OTOH writing for sale, i.e. with the intent of eventually selling has to be disciplined and it’s a form of communication. I don’t know about other writers, but I enjoy the second more. What I don’t enjoy is jumping through gatekeepers’ hoops, since they often have nothing to do with what the public likes.

          In the sense you meant, though, of doing something I really want to do and getting paid, yeah, it is the ideal situation. Even if I never made more than I’ve made in my career on average (and if Kris and Dean are right, given my ability to sling words, there’s the possibility of making far more.) JUST the lack of stress and enjoying not only writing but reading without wonder “why is this cr*p getting the push when my stuff isn’t” or other unworthy thoughts, would be worth it.

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  7. When people ask me what I do for a living my standard response is, “as little as possible.” Which earns me some strange looks, but is basically true. I have been mostly self-employed for several years, I do occasionally work part-time for my last regular employer; but only when they call me and the work fits my schedule. Mainly I work seasonal work that I am self-employed at, and when I work, I work like a demon. Six weeks to two months of 12-16 hour days at hard physical labor and I can take the rest of the year off, if I live frugally. If I want to buy something extra (like a new four-wheeler or snowmobile) I often either work odd jobs, or go back to work part time for a former employer for a couple months, so that I don’t deplete my savings. Budgeting for six to eight months at a time with no income takes a little discipline, but being able to decide when I get up in the morning, that I want to go to Wyoming hunting for a couple weeks, and throwing everything in the truck and taking off by afternoon is worth it.
    I just hate being tied down to a steady job, so the freedom is worth the uncertainty and necessary discipline to me.

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