Persistence

A throwback Article on writing

This article was originally published at Mad Genius Club on April 22, 2017.

Crochet Cabal, fractal image by myself

You won't be successful at writing.

You will never be successful at writing as long as you measure yourself against someone else's yardstick. Your success has to be yours, no one else's. You can't write like Heinlein/Correia/Nuttall - only they can (or could, since I don't think zombie Heinlein actually exists, no matter what Sarah says). Sure, you can go look at Larry Correia's list of writers, and figure out where on the alphabet you fall. But the honest truth of the matter is that the only way for you to be successful is for you to write. You don't have to write 10,000 words a day to be a success, or even a thousand. If, like most of us, you are juggling the writing, family, and a career or something, then you know that there are days you can't keep all your balls in the air.

Some writers are really spectacular jugglers. They can keep six flaming torches aloft, and spin 'em under their legs and the rest of us are all gaping, or peering through our fingers with hands over our faces flinching because dang, that's gonna hurt if he misses... Look, I know some folks who eat fire, or juggle with it, and they didn't pick up the chainsaws and say 'look, Ma, no hands!' and not mean it. They started out slowly, with things like scarves that float a little and give you plenty of time to get your hands in the right position before you have to grab.

Writing is like that. Sure, there will be days your wordcount is in the thousands, but there might also be a week with no words at all. Instead of beating yourself up, pick up the balls and start again. Keep your eyes on the balls in motion, because if you're looking at the floor all the time, you're going to miss them. If you're looking at the dude with the flaming chainsaws, you're going to feel like a failure, and you're not.

For one thing, we don't all write the same stories. Thank goodness. How boring would that be? Each one of us has a different voice, a style all our own, and only we can tell that story in that way. Is there a market for it? Who knows? You won't, until you put it out there. The beauty of Indie Publishing is that you can put it out there, for very little or no capital expenditure, and find out if there's a market. If there isn't, you shrug and move on. But you're still a success. Why? Because you wrote that. You finished it, and you put it out there. Success is not about how much money you get, it's about the completion.

Money is good, I'm not saying we shouldn't be trying for money. It's a great milestone of 'readers like me!' and ultimately it's what tells us how successful a story is. But you, the writer, are a success when you write something. When you don't write, or when you ditch all your stories before they are complete, then you fail. It's what makes you a writer, not how much money, or who publishes you.

Now that you've succeeded in writing a story, what comes next? Write another one. And another, and.... you get the idea. If you want to make money, if that's the goal of this juggler's act, then you need to have more than one story out there. Simply put, readers want to read, and having read, they move on to the next book. One is not enough. I'm not sure where the point comes in that volume creates it's own momentum - at six novels, I had it for a while, and then lost it when I didn't keep publishing. Momentum is important.

Does that make me a failed writer? No, I think not. I still have fans. I have a book that should be out already, but has been delayed while I added a new career to my juggling repertoire. I have more stories in progress (including a children's book that unfolded in my head today nearly fully formed. Weird how that works, after years of saying I'd never be able to write one). I am a successful writer. I'm a slow writer, now, managing a thousand words a week rather than a day as I once did. But I'm not trying to make a living as a writer - that would change my goals. I want to up that wordcount, but for the moment other things have priority. I'll creep slowly back up to adding the writing ball into my daily juggling.

In other words, don't beat yourself up if you can't manage pro-level output on a daily basis. Push yourself, but don't burn yourself out. Set a manageable pace, and don't quit. When you drop the writing ball, pick it back up, and instead of rushing, slowly work up to speed. If you rush, you're more likely to make mistakes. And you don't want that with a flaming chainsaw, really you don't!