Wednesday, January 3, 2018

The Purge - 2018 Edition

I started indie publishing my fiction in 2011. Through then and 2012, I met a lot of authors who were taking control of their career like I was. We had so much in common, and it seemed this new age of e-books marked a renaissance in writing.

In 2015 after the move from Hell, I was in the process of ramping my career up again. I realized some of the folks whose blogs or Facebook posts or tweets I read regularly back in the heyday weren't posting anymore. After a little research, I discovered roughly a third of them had quit writing.

The reasons for doing so were numerous, but the essential issue boiled down to they weren't getting whatever they needed from indie publishing. Whether it was money, accolades, attention, interaction with fans, etc. didn't matter. The work was too hard for how little those writers felt they were getting.

However, new writers kept entering the field. I chalked up some of the originals dropping out to "gold rush" mentality. They simply weren't writing for the sheer pleasure of it and selling their stories as a bonus.

Now, I'm at Day Three of 2018. Once again, I've mapped out a schedule for the year, and I'm cleaning out old stuff. And once again, I'm ditching social media contacts who haven't posted anything for the last year or two.

Guess what? The authors no longer writing are running about ten percent. I think its more due to keeping my business contacts manageable, rather than fewer people quitting. And over and over, I've been seeing writers' post about how the hamster wheel of publishing is spinning too fast and they can't keep up.

Uhhhh....

No one said you had to, folks. That's the whole point of an indie career. You can write as much or as little as you like. You can publish as much or as little as you like. No one's holding a gun to your head!

(And if someone is, call 9-1-1!)

The whole point of this glorious exercise is total control. Some people figure out they can't write full-time. It doesn't meet their needs, whether it's mental, physical, or monetary.

And guess what? That's okay.

If you need to quit, that's okay, too. Writing isn't for everyone. Just like I prefer to crochet rather than knit while watching TV.

But before you totally throw in the towel, ask yourself this: are you quitting because you realized writing isn't your cuppa, or are you quitting because you burned yourself out trying to keep up with the Jonses?

Take a break. Figure things out. And if you find that it's Number 2, might I make a suggestion?

Write for yourself. Don't write for anyone else. Don't write to publish. Find your joy again.

And if you can't find that spark, then do everyone a favor, and stop making yourself miserable. Life's too fucking short.

5 comments:

  1. I've noticed the attrition rate as well. I've said as much multiple times. Makes me sad, some great writers straight up quit. I had a bad 2017 when it comes to writing, but I'm back at it pretty hard this week and having a blast. I always have fun when I'm writing, except if I'm unwell. Then it's a chore and my product suffers, both volume and quality.

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    1. Yeah, I totally get the bad 2017. Been there. But I've hit the keyboard hard since Monday because I'm loving this story!

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  2. I think a good writer generally has a lot of other life avenues open to them. So if they don't love it, well, they have a lot of other options.

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  3. That's it right there -- write for yourself. It's easy to get tangled up in What's Selling Now, or What People Want. I know what it's like to have a series going and fans asking about the next book, and just not feeling it. [hides under keyboard] But if you're not having a good time at least... what, 70% or so of the time? Then you're doing it wrong.

    Kris Rusch always says to write for yourself. Dean says to close the door of your writing office and keep everyone else out. Leah Cutter says that when she thinks about what to write next, she keeps thinking until she comes up with a project that makes her giggle; if she's not that happy to dive in and work on it, she keeps looking.

    I think it's also easy to get caught up in the Best Practices discussions about how releasing at least six novels a year is necessary for a good, growing career as a writer. About how if you publish something every month on Amazon, everything for sale under that author name gets a boost in its rankings. (Which is true. And it's not that hard to produce a short story in months when you don't have a book out. But anyway.)

    But if you can't work at that pace, then you can't. If your family has issues, your day job heats up, you get sick, you're moving [cough] or whatever -- or even if the stress of going faster than you want to is just beating you down -- then it's okay to go slower. And I think that the enthusiasm for spreading around what folks have learned about what works best or what helps grow your income or whatever makes it hard to remember that not everyone has growing their income (or whatever) as their top priority. And if you're listening to (or reading) those conversations, you might not realize that, if you don't share their goals, they're not talking to you.

    You need to figure out your own goals, then measure your success by whether you met your goals. Measuring your success against someone else's goals hardly ever works. :P

    Angie

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    1. Very true. My mantra is if I want to be miserable, I'd go back to practicing law.

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