How Writing Destroyed my Future, Part 1
This is a rambling post. I’m just warning you all now. It’s been a week since I blogged, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about a lot of things, and they’re all sort of stored up and ready to explode. Bear with me.
I have not written or edited anything more difficult than a three-paragraph e-mail this whole week. The beasties were home for three days last week, but I can’t even blame my lack of work on them. I simply chose not to write, which, in itself, is extraordinarily creepy.
Don’t misunderstand. I was incredibly productive. I ran a bunch of errands. I helped the Peanut cross stitch her first project. I made four hats and a scarf. I decluttered the girls’ room on Thursday, and I decluttered the boys’ on Friday. Yesterday, I took the Princess shopping and made cookies with the Squirrel. Today, I got a good start on cleaning out the monster closet under the stairs.
I also cleaned out my closet and work space. And the biggest part of THAT project, at least emotionally, was boxing up almost all of my commercial writing stuff.
I blogged a while back about the decision not to renew my subscription to The Portland Business Journal. Now, I’ve taken it all one step further and boxed up all my notes, records, background material, files, and portfolio samples from the last few years of freelance commercial writing.
This is sort of a big closure thing. It’s not that I’ll never do commercial writing again. I’d take on projects if old clients called. I have taken on projects as recently as November, in fact. But I haven’t actively marketed myself as a freelance commercial writer in a few years. Ever since Ravenmarked took over my life, I just haven’t really wanted to take on a lot of commercial work. It’s not that I don’t like it—I love it. I just love writing fiction even more.
So I sort of said goodbye to commercial writing. Sort of. The files are all there, easily accessible if I decide to open up shop again. But for the time being, I’ve closed the door.
Now what?
Okay, this is where it gets trickier.
Back when The Man and I were first engaged and talking about our future together, we assumed I would be a stay-at-home mommy. He knew I wanted to write, and he supported that dream, and we both talked about how cool it would be if I could be published someday, but mostly, we figured I’d stay home with the kids and make our home a place where everyone could hang out. I looked forward to that future. I wanted that future.
A year passed, then two, then five. No babies. He had his share of career crises, and I kept working, and then we had trouble getting pregnant. By the time our first child was born, we’d been married about eight and a half years. I’d worked full-time almost that entire time. When I wasn’t working full-time, I was going to school part-time and working part-time.
I didn’t know how to come home and channel June Cleaver.
Working that long gets in your spirit, you know? You have an identity. When I became Sparky’s mom, I lost that individual identity that I had when I was working. I felt like I wasn’t “Amy” anymore. I was “Sparky’s mom” or “The Man’s wife” or some other third option. But with another baby a mere 20 months after Sparky, and then a move and a third baby in 2003, I didn’t really have time to think about taking on a job. I mean, daycare costs alone would have eaten up anything I made, and it wasn’t worth it. It was late in 2003 when I started putting out feelers for freelance commercial writing work. I got my first project in early 2004.
Well, now here we are again, at another crossroads. I’ve been doing this fiction thing for a couple of years now. My stories have been live for over a year. And the truth is there’s nothing I’d rather do than write fiction.
Except, perhaps, be a mom and a homemaker.
Boxing up all that stuff was me saying goodbye to something that meant a lot to me for a long time. When I started freelancing, we needed the money. There were months when my meager $125 earnings made the difference between overdrawing the checking account and making it to the next payday. We never really lived on my income—never used it to plan each month. It was always extra—something we’d use if we had to. Eventually, The Man got enough pay increases and I made enough that my income helped us pay off a crap ton of debt and save an emergency fund.
My time as a freelance writer served its purpose. It helped us out in countless ways, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But now, The Man makes enough to pay for everything we need and many things we want. We don’t need my income. That’s great, but it makes me wonder what I should do with myself now.
Confession: I’m not making any real money from fiction. There are numerous reasons for this—some I can guess and some I may never know. But the fact that I’m not making any money from it raises the question of whether I should be spending this much time on it when I have kids to raise and a house that needs some serious TLC.
And so this is the crux of the matter—the thing I’ve been mulling over while I’ve been crocheting, cleaning, and parenting this week. And the thing I’ve realized is… Writing fiction has ruined me for anything else. Because at this point, the only thing I ever want to make money doing is writing fiction. And if I can’t make money at it, well… Why bother?
And before anyone says it… Yes, I know I can’t give up the stories. They’ll always be in my head. But I can make this a hobby instead of trying to make it a career. And that’s where the real issue lies. I hate to end on a cliff hanger, but this is where my thoughts start to get muddy. I need to mull over the second part of this post. I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day with the rest of my thoughts on this whole thing.
Oooh, I am relating to this in a big way. Both my house and my kids. Not that I ever had ANY kind of professional life before kids (no, I don’t count stacking placemats at bed bath and beyond as a professional life) but the part where right now I have to decide if the sacrifices both my house and my kids pay so that I can write fiction are worth the rewards of writing fiction…(as reflected in my wish to make enough to pay a housekeeper.)
See, this is what I’m saying. This isn’t angst over writing or anything. I know I’m a decent writer. But I SUCK as a marketer, partly because I have no friggin’ clue how to market the kind of stuff I write in this new publishing world. So if I can’t market it, I can’t sell it. If I can’t sell it, it’s just a hobby. And it’s a fine hobby if I look at it that way and pour myself into the family stuff, like I always thought I would do. But now I’m afraid going down this road at all has ruined me for a future like that.
I’ve been thinking that if I always price everything at 99 cents from here on out my brain will let me say “This is a hobby” then I can have fun writing and not neglect the family so much. Then I think “but what does that do to the industry?” and “Oh man, sales are slipping, time to price pulse” and “Ooh, a chance to increase my platform with a regular guest column” and I realize that my brain has made that leap from hobby to obsession and I’m afraid there might be no going back.
At the same time, Amy, don’t beat yourself up over not being a marketer. You’re a darned WRITER, after all! You can’t be everything! But there’s no problem with having a spate of writing, and a spate of doing house work, kiddy stuff, other hobbies … the problem comes when one’s totally obsessed with one thing and one thing only … something you realised months ago, I think. As you always say: balance! I too have found that I can lose that balance.
Once, when I was editing a doctoral thesis, I neglected meals, the house, my husband, sleep …. and he duly complained. I’ve made it a major point ever since to have decent meals on the table (well, semi-decent, at least, but at least to make an effort), and if something needed doing in the house, however big or small, I’ve done it. Including and down to taking out the garbage. Now, I know you haven’t always got those bits right while writing … and I’m not pointing a finger in the slightest (we all do things at our own pace, right?) … what I am trying to say is that you aren’t alone, and that it is possible to come out the other side … but who’s to say I won’t go back there at a drop of the hat? I certainly couldn’t promise, given the right project. But I’d try not to. I hope.
I do think that balance is less a daily thing and more a lifetime thing. Like, can I look back over a several month or even several year period and see that things were pretty much balanced? No, not over the last five or six years. But then, over the last five or six years, all that work I took on served a purpose–it got us to a better place financially. In the short term, it was worth it. So is it worth going down the rabbit hole for fiction when I’m not making any money at it? I don’t know.
In another five years, I’d like to look back and say, “yes, I had periods where I wrote or edited like a madwoman and periods where I did house projects and periods that were nothing but parenting and shepherding kids through the tween/teen years. But overall, it worked out pretty well.”
I guess this is all part of figuring out how to manage it. But there’s another piece to this, too, which I’ll blog about shortly… And that’s the fear factor…
I’m sorry you’re facing this decision. I was in a similar situation when I started writing again – it was a much-needed way to reclaim my identity when I felt it had disappeared under ‘mum’ and ‘wife.’ I’ve yet to see if I can make money from it, but I’m not holding my breath. I can’t market either, although I’m trying hard to learn. But I’m facing the fact that once my youngest is at school I’ll be looking for a job that does pay, and writing will have to fit around everything else in my life. Right now I’m pursuing the writing as hard as I can since I have until September to write whenever I get time without the kids. It’ll come fast. And then I’ll be in the position that you are, maybe having to make the choice. I don’t want to make that choice. After marriage and kids, writing has made me the happiest I’ve ever been, and I don’t want to give it up.
I think the hard part is that there’s no “right” or “surefire” way to market a book these days. If there ever was…
And I don’t want to sound like a privileged elite, either. I mean, we’re comfortable, but we’re by no means on the “right” side of the tracks. We have a low mortgage compared to a lot of people, we have no debt other than our house, and we live frugally. It’s not like we’re rolling in money. We just manage what we have carefully.
I do agree with you that writing is the happiest thing I have that’s just mine. I love my family to pieces, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything, but writing? It’s the best thing I have that’s just for me, and I don’t want to give it up. It’s just a matter of finding the right place for it in my life.
I think you’re thinking too hard about marketing. And it’s understandable, because it’s easy to get caught up when the loudest people are saying you have to market to sell.
But the people who have been doing this for 20 years or better? They’re saying marketing – even all the marketing they did (and what little their publishers did), isn’t what sells books. It’s having many, many books on the shelf that sells books…not screaming about it all over the place.
Personally, I’d rather follow the people who have been doing this for a long time, and have a lot more experience than those who have been at it for a couple of years, regardless of success.
Do you read Dean Wesley Smith? If not, you should. His best advice is don’t worry about sales, don’t worry about marketing, just write/publish/repeat. That’s the advice I’m following, and no matter where it gets me, I’ll enjoy the journey. Like you, that gives me more time to try to keep a decent house, make good dinners, pursue hobbies, and do things *other than writing business stuff*…which I honestly think will make me a better writer in the end.
I have a day job…and an identity that comes from 12 years doing it, but I’d give it up in a heartbeat if I could embrace my writerly identity full-time. In that respect, writing has completely spoiled me for the day job…but I’m stuck with it anyways. At least until I’ve written a bunch more books…
Good luck – I think we all have to work through this particular point eventually as writers…but it’s a good thing to clarify our overall goals, in the end, IMO.
Jamie, thanks for such a thoughtful reply.
Yeah, I read DWS occasionally, but I’ve pulled back from reading a lot of publishing and writing blogs because I just got so darn overwhelmed with it all. I do think you’re right about what makes a writer sell a lot of books–it’s just having a bunch of titles available. The problem is, I see people who are marketing their butts off, and they SEEM to be having some success. I guess I’m not exactly sure what I’m missing–either it’s spin on their part or it’s what I write or it’s some other thing I’m not figuring out. (Although, I will say that it seems to be slightly easier to get traction with marketing if you write anything YA. Not hugely easier, perhaps, but that category just seems to have an edge.)
Clarifying goals–yes, I think that’s what I’m doing here. And ultimately, my biggest goals are to raise four productive members of society and NOT chase away my husband, because I have to live with him after the beasties are gone. So I guess if I can do those two things around my writing, then I’ll be golden.
I have so much I want to say, I don’t think I’ll be able to fit it all here without getting all soap-boxy. First, what a great, honest, post. I can’t wait to read part 2. You sure know how to write a cliffhanger.
Second, I had a big aha regarding people who seem to be having success (spelled $$) with only one or 2 books and “marketing” their butts off. (The soap box part is marketing vs selling, but I won’t get into that!) Part of marketing is brand awareness. People who write in very well-defined brands, ie YA, are leveraging that brand. Although you have some leverage with the fantasy brand, my understanding is the top brands are YA, romance, thriller. Building your Amy brand takes time.
Also, it’s begun to amaze me how much the Indie route is like the trad path — a career is built over time with a lot of good books. My understanding is that in trad pub, you would not have seen any sales data at this point (1 year into it). I also understand that’s changing, but IIRC, until recently, the writer didn’t usually get the first royalty statement until about 18 months after pub.
And I’m replying on Jamie’s thread because I totally agree. Dean (and Kristine) have great advice about building a writing career over the long haul. They’ve had a huge influence on my focus and my decision to pull way out to the edge of the tsunami of chirping.
Pulling out of a lot of the blog industry advice is good, but I think their posts are still worth following regularly. They are sane and full of good advice as well as inspiration!
Anyway, hang in there. As someone noted above, you’re a writer, not a marketeer, or a sales rep.
Cathryn, I think you’re right about all of this, and I’ll address the time thing and such more in part two. I honestly think that a big part of my marketing/sales angst is that I follow too many writers and publishers. Every chipper “OMG look at my rank!” post gets to me, even when I’m happy for someone. I wonder what I’m doing wrong, or I get cynical, and I don’t like either of those things.
I’m curious about your aha moment… Have you blogged it? I’m so far behind on reading blogs…
I’ll tell you the same thing I have to keep telling myself about my jewellery business: it takes three years to see if a small/new business is a successful venture. Three years. Your books have been live for only one year. Trust me, I KNOW what it feels like. Really do. The Dragon’s Hoard (my jewellery) hasn’t had the kind of success which can even remotely justify the time and money I’ve already put into it so far. To know I need to stick with this for another two years solely to see if it comes close to holding its own is terrifying. But I put too much research into this before I started to be able to pretend like I didn’t know what I was getting into. Three years. Only a year in is not the time to reassess whether or not to turn something into a “sometimes-hobby”. I believe that’s true, because I learnt it from many, many unrelated business sources, and honestly, how can something gain attention in only one small year? The only thing you can do is keep producing quality work, and nature will take its course. You can’t control sales, only your own output.
If it helps, I just read Silver Thaw. Actually, “read” isn’t quite the word. I consumed it as fast as possible. I WANT you to keep writing. Ravenmarked is all lined up for the next time I can safely put aside the time to tear through it.
And if you have more work available after that, I will buy it and read it as well. You’ve already established a reputable name for me, as a reader (and a picky reader at that). That will continue to happen over time with more people. You will grow. You just need to stick with it – three years, minimum.
~Ashlee
http://ashleesch.com
http://theDragonsHoard.bigcartel.com
Silver Thaw’s a stunner, isn’t it? I’ve never read a story quite like it!
Ashlee and Laurel, thanks for your kind words about Silver Thaw. I think it’s actually a better piece than Ravenmarked, but my perceptions can be a little off…
Ashlee, what you say is absolutely true about the time it takes to build a business and everything. I recognized that going into this, but I got lured by the “instant” success stories other people were publishing. I think in the early days of Kindles and e-books, there wasn’t such a huge slush pile of stuff, so maybe it was a little easier to make a splash? It’s the difference between dropping a pebble in a teacup and dropping one in the ocean. Here I am throwing pebbles in the ocean…
The time it takes to build brand and all is definitely a factor in my thoughts… I just haven’t gotten that far in this part one…. I’ll go into that more soon.
Thanks for your comment.
I’m looking forward to the next part in this story. I think when it comes down to it, you’ll always be a writer, it’s more about how to line it up/balance it in your head and your heart so that it makes sense and feels right, and then knowing that what feels right today might not necessarily still feel right in a month or a year, and allowing yourself to go with those flows and cycles you find yourself in.
Acceptance.
Well, that’s what I’ve taken from this post anyway. Finding your comfortable spot and then being accepting of that.
But, I am incredibly sleep deprived and have had a mega stressful day, so I’m probably totally off the mark. In any event, you’re wonderful, and I value you
Yeah. Totally rambling. I think I’ll go to bed.
Cassie, LOL. Hey, the only way I know I’m alive sometimes is by measuring my level of sleep deprivation…
I think there is something to that idea that what’s right today isn’t necessarily what’s right tomorrow, and that’s part of where my tension comes from. What was right when I was doing commercial freelancing isn’t necessarily right for this part of my writing journey. I have to redefine a lot of things, and that’s what these posts are about–redefining what I’m doing, what’s right, what makes sense for me and my family. And it’s not like my kids remain static, either. I could beg off a lot of things when I had little ones, but I don’t really have LITTLE kids anymore. Now we’re getting into the TaxiMom age.
I hope you slept well!
It sounds to me as if you’re already managing to balance family and writing pretty well. What’s really hanging you up is that you’re not making much money with the fiction, and you feel you need that as a justification to keep going. But IT’S ONLY BEEN A YEAR! You know perfectly well, but need to keep reminding yourself, that establishing yourself as a novelist takes time. There’s no law that you have to plunge into marketing and make it happen faster. I’m long past the family stage, but marketing is the last thing on my mind. Nothing’s going to grow if I don’t keep writing.
You’re actually in a good place right now. You narrowed down your priorities by putting away the freelance stuff. When I had kids at home, the hardest things to do were the things I wanted to do *for me*. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but it hung over my head even after they were grown and gone. It’s a bad rut to get into. You don’t need to justify your writing. Just keep the balance, for now.
Catana, you wouldn’t think I was balanced if you lived here…
Actually, a huge thing will be getting my house back under control. I think if I can declutter and get our physical space manageable again, I’ll feel a little more peaceful. I have more thoughts on that coming soon…
You are totally right about having something for me. Writing is the best thing I do. It’s where I’m happiest, too. I’m an ugly, ugly person when I’m not writing.
This blog post could have come from me!!! And while I don’t have kids to contend with, I DO have a husband that suffers from depression, a job that will really go nowhere unless I shift focus to become tenured (which will leave me little to no time for writing), and debt accruing due to my “hobby” of writing. *sigh* Between the covers, editors, etc and making no money at all is really taking it’s toll. I’m going to keep going but I have to resign myself to the fact that this may always just be a hobby and that I may only sell books to friends and family. If I don’t do that the disappointment is going to kill me!
All I can do is continue to write when I have time and see if something shifts sales-wise so that I can start earning a little to help pay for future book stuff.
See, I think that might have to be the way I start to look at it–that this is something I do because it makes me and a few people who love me happy. It’s not that I necessarily think it will stay that way forever–as people said above, platform/brand-building take time. But if it gives me peace to think of it as a hobby, maybe that’s for the best. Anything else is gravy.
Maybe I should start selling my crocheted hats to make money for book covers…
Just a couple of thoughts:
Firstly – If you DO come to see it as a hobby rather than a career, it may free you to enjoy it more? I don’t believe that good writing (such as yours) is really about making money. It’s about creating art, for the sheer joy of that creation.
Secondly – some of the writers that I admire most have only written as a ‘hobby’. Professor JRR Tolkien, for example. And Professor CS Lewis. Many would say that Jane Austen only wrote ‘as a hobby’. And there must be many others.
So to sum up: seeing it as a hobby, if you choose to go that road, would NOT diminish the worth of what you are doing; and there would still be no reason why that worth should not some day be recognised by the world at large.
Ruth, yes, I think that there might be some freedom in redefining how I see all of this. For one thing, I know I would not sacrifice quality just because I started viewing my work as a hobby. I’d still pour heart and soul into it, and it might even be more authentic, because I would focus more on the joy and the story. I’m all about regaining some of my peace.
I can’t really add much more than what’s been said above, but I will say this– I refuse to market. We can be non-marketing buddies together. I just want to write, and I’m not greatly concerned with my sales. (I still do check though, haha.)
This flies in the face of all the writing advice I read, but I figure what’s most important– my happiness or my perceived happiness? I have thought, in moments of weakness, that I would like to market and get my books out there. Then I slapped sense into myself and reexamined why I’m doing this. In the end, it’s all because I want to write, so I’ve just decided I’m going to focus on the part I like.
I’m in business for myself; I can do that. (Though I have to keep reminding myself.)
I don’t know if this helps at all or is even on topic. I just thought this was a beautifully honest post, and I’m all for honest blog posts. I look forward to part two. Anything to keep you sane.
Yes, I’ll be your non-marketing buddy! LOL.
Your post about remembering the joy of the story reminded me of this, too. I think trying to “market” and sell and figure out how to do that in this weird, weird publishing environment is sucking the joy right out of my work, and I hate that.
On the flip side, I also know what a surly person I am when I’m not writing. I just have to figure out how to work it all into my life…
This is regarding your question about the aha moment — I haven’t blogged about it, I only blog about once or twice a month now. The aha was sort of related to what Ashlee said about taking 3 years to build a business. Part of that is building the brand. Some writers might find faster success because they’re leveraging an existing brand.
I don’t have a clear-cut genre brand to leverage. And, there are some brands that are simply larger segments of the market and so I think it can be easier to get traction. The other side of that is the genres that haven’t been well-served by trad pub in recent years — westerns and, from what I understand, historicals.
Either way, a large part of a writer’s brand is her name/voice, and as others said above, more books are needed to build that. I don’t think I’m saying anything you don’t know, so maybe it’s not so “aha”(!)
Anyway, this has been very helpful for me in reducing my internet activity significantly, ignoring the noise, to focus on writing, which has been quite calming, satisfying, and … fun! Conventional wisdom says you need to promote. I don’t agree with that — back to DWS and KKR who helped solidify that view. I could go on about platform, but I think I’ll save that for part 2 and clog your comments there as well.
And just to add quickly to that – this is why you hear the “instant success” people more loudly. Those of us who eschew the constant marketing train simply aren’t around as much, because we’re off writing the next book(s).