Day: January 10, 2022

Success as an author?Success as an author?

Depends what you mean by “success”

One of my writing groups (the one that isnā€™t a critique circle) has set a blog-post prompt of ā€œHow do you measure success as an author?ā€
Weā€™re supposed to introspect, come up with wise words to inspire and console others. I donā€™t know about yā€™all, but the past two years have been a low-rising roller coaster, beginning with a brief burst of elation that my first book (my ā€œdebutā€ if you want to get precious about it) was coming out.

WIte, red, and blue award ribbons from a fair

Only then we had a little bit of a pandemic to deal with.

And now itā€™s two years later.

All That Was Asked has never had a book-launch party (it slightly predates online launch parties), a signing session, a reading at a conventionā€”none of those things. Not uncoincidentally, it hasnā€™t made much dough for me or for my publisher. At least the print copies are mostly print-on-demand, so no oneā€™s staring at a warehouse full of unsold copies and calling a shredding company.

But is selling a ton of books a success? To stay sane in this business, I think you have to measure success more on the basis of what you are doing than what you have done. If youā€™re making oodles of money in the publishing industry, thatā€™s mostly a matter of luck, so is that success? Iā€™d call it good fortune. Itā€™s very much a lottery. Iā€™ve read absolutely stunning work in critique circles, listened to mind-blowing readings by little-known writers, and Iā€™ve even had people tell me after a reading ā€œwow, that was awesome!ā€

What makes sense is to measure how this workā€”writingā€”impacts your life. Is this what you live for? Not in a rosy-eyed, dreamy way, not ā€œI luv writing <3ā€ but ā€œwriting is what drags me out of everything elseā€ and ā€œwriting is my food, drink, and sleepā€ and ā€œwriting is how I exist in this universe.ā€

What Iā€™m doing right now is working on projects that Iā€™ve wanted to tackle for yearsā€”no, decadesā€”but never could due to the vicissitudes of child-rearing, day-job workload, personal upheavals, and disability.Ā  Iā€™m not whining. These are just facts. I chose to raise kids, and it was satisfying work (and, yes, frustrating, too, but in all the right ways). However, doing the best job possible involved more than dropping them off at our barely-adequate schools. It meant advocating for them, fighting an uncaring administrative system, volunteering, fundraising, and, as a last-resort, homeschooling. At least in the pandemic age, there are more parents out there who understand that homeschoolingā€”at least not ideallyā€”isnā€™t a romp in the garden, itā€™s serious work. And, like most of us, for me that was work that had to take place in parallel with earning a living.

So right now, Iā€™m successful. Every morning (afternoon?) I wake up, and thereā€™s writing to do.

  • This kind of writing, which is off-the-cuff, barely edited, and hurled into the interweb’s event horizon, never to be seen by human eyes.
  • Critical writing, where Iā€™m critiquing work by fellow writers, trying to help them make their stories the best they can be.Ā 
  • Social-media writingā€”mostly Twitterā€”where I practice being concise, kind, and thoughtful.
  • And, finally, yes, writing my own stories, the ones Iā€™ve been wanting to read.

What I’ve been looking forā€”and yes, I’ve found some, but far too fewā€”are stories led by characters who have trouble communicating, who donā€™t fit in, who think differently than others but find a way through life anyhow. I’m tired of hero’s-journey stories and chosen-one tales that take themselves too seriously. I don’t mind playing with the tropes. For instance, one of my WIPs has a seeming “chosen one” in it, but the whole thing is a crock, a scheme worked up by a person who’s trying to change society and is using an old myth to get buy-in. Not that the “chosen” person isn’t worthy, but there’s no magic in the processā€”they’re carefully selected for capability and then trained for the job.

Iā€™m not writing to market. I admit that. So I canā€™t complain about sales, not too much. It may take time for people like me to find the stories Iā€™m writing for them. Thatā€™s OK. I waited a long time. A little longerā€”I can deal.

Well, I’m trying to, anyhow.

In the meantime, Iā€™m keeping on. For me, that writers learned to use remote meetings to connect for critiques, discuss craft, conduct conventions, and more has been a compensatory gain during the pandemic. Itā€™s not a benefit of this horrible time; itā€™s a thing we could should have been doing all along, and only just now learned to value. When the pandemicā€™s over, weā€™ll keep connected this way. Thatā€™s a good thing, but we donā€™t get to pretend itā€™s all right that millions of people died while those of us privileged to live were fumbling our way to this belated discovery.

Iā€™ve leveraged that new learning, because Iā€™m an engineer and tech things come naturally to me. Iā€™ve let myself get roped into volunteering to help others less comfortable with the technologyā€”and thatā€™s OK, because participating with other writers helps me connect more deeply with my writing community.  I value the friendships Iā€™ve formed with people Iā€™ve only met in Zoom rooms. This is not a trivial feelingā€”I dedicated my Monday afternoons for half this past year to help a Zoom friend whose critique circle had lost their only zoom-capable member. That meant stepping aside from one of my other critique circles, one that needed me less. Iā€™m returning to my prior group as of this month, because my friend’s old zoom-host has returned. Iā€™ll miss the new friends I made in her circle, even though we only ever saw each other in little boxes on our computer screens.

Am I a failure because I had to defer my writing career? Looking back through my drawer of shelved and partly-done stories, one thing is strikingly clearā€”I was so young, so ignorant, so clueless. Much of what Iā€™m writing now, I couldnā€™t have done when I was younger. In technique, I’m much better than my younger self; some of that gain I can attribute to years of writing science and engineering reports and papers, working collaboratively with colleagues on phrasing, structure, and word choice … plus coping with deadlines. Beyond the technique, older me is able to imagine more-complex characters, see worlds with more-different people in them. Through personal experience, I know most livesā€”most real storiesā€”don’t have a ā€œcall to adventureā€ or a ā€œsupreme ordeal.ā€ Thereā€™s no wise mentor waiting to guide us. We have to muddle through, try to survive in an irrational universe, and deal with the fact we’ll never quite make sense of it all.

Sure, Iā€™m still learning. You have to keep learning. Itā€™s the key to growth in every respect. Even there, though, Iā€™m doing better, working actively to learn more of what I need to continue improving.

In my next posting, Iā€™ll demonstrate my success by sharing a list of what I consider to be my 2021 accomplishments not only as a writer but also as a member of the writing community.

Iā€™ll warn you right now: itā€™s a longer post.