Book number one was a bit defiant and ugly. Professional book one, I should clarify. By this point, I had six finished manuscripts behind me. I had an agent. I was nominated for a national unpublished award. It was 2009, and I was on the cusp of a ten-year journey to busting past the gatekeepers of traditional publishing.
And then things fell apart. I caught my agent lying. The buy meetings in New York didn’t go as planned. And someone who claimed to support my dream gave me an ultimatum: make money at this or be done with it. Unacceptable, in retrospect, but the demand sent me to the creepy digital corridors of Craigslist. My first professional writing job was a romance novel for $1500.
This week, I began professional book number forty. In fifteen years, I’ve also written educational courses, white papers aimed at the Department of Defense, articles in glossy magazines, customer-facing content for an energy company, and cookbooks. These projects diversified my skills, but the forty books—eight genres, five three-book series, and a handful of category bestsellers—are the sweet spot of my strength.
I want their lessons to become the sweet spot of your strength.
A few may be difficult to process. This list of ten isn’t exhaustive and isn’t for the easily bruised. But if you’re confident that longevity in this industry is what you want, I have a few insights that might help you get there.
Define Your Freedom
And chase that. Happiness in this industry is found in freedom: freedom to pick the genre that ignites you, freedom to live as a digital nomad, freedom to quit your job, and freedom from the judgments of others and those who may give you ultimatums. Whatever your freedom, make that the cornerstone of your creative trajectory.
Fall in Love with Writing, Not Having Written
Most of my peers who fell away from writing were more in love with the fantasy of being a writer than with the grind of actually writing. They were product over process. It’s not necessary to love all aspects of the craft, but at least one element must become as natural and desirable to you as breathing. You cease to be the fullness of you without it. It becomes who you are, not what you do. That love won’t arrive during the first few projects, but it will come.
Writer’s Block is a Myth
It doesn’t exist. The romanticized notion of the tortured writer is nothing more than a fairy tale spun by our subconscious, with the help of pop culture, to justify being undisciplined. Stop with the nonsense. Rituals can be helpful in the first twenty-one days of establishing a new habit. After that, leave them behind, lest they become crutches on the path to writer’s block.
The Blinking Cursor Will Always Suck
All these books later, page one, indent, and go still gives me pause. That insecurity will likely still be there at book one hundred. Close your eyes, allow it to pass through you, then write. There is perfect, and there is perfect for now. Your book’s optimal opening is in the ending, anyway. You will circle back. You should circle back.
Develop a system for starting books to help you get past these feelings quickly, then don’t look back. My system is to write three possible half-page openings and then email them to my ideal reader. She picks her favorite, and I place the rest into a cut file to recycle elsewhere in the book. Your system may involve dictation, allowing yourself one hour—no more—to brainstorm twenty opening lines, or reviewing the slide show of your inspirational photos. Systems are rituals that work, so find yours.
Editing is the Magic
After all these years as an editor and writing coach, I’m still amazed at how many writers think the greatest burden of time is in drafting a book. They hear the legend of Dean Koontz, how he writes clean the first time and doesn’t look back, and believe his process to be the norm. As a starting point, consider that editing should take four times longer and have the same intensity as drafting. My mentor told me the greats do a hundred self-editing passes. Technology makes this doable and efficient, so no whining. Be great.
You’re not looking for everything on every pass. Have one or two things in mind and pass through your pages, making only those things stellar. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder and start back at page one with a few more aspects of quality writing. It’s a grind, but it’s where the magic happens.
Keep a self-editing checklist. This is a dynamic tool that changes as you evolve. When something that tripped you up before becomes intuitive, remove it from the list. When you learn something new, add it to the list so you can watch for it on one of those passes. If you expect your editor to do the heavy lifting of all those passes, you’ll go broke and never grow as a writer. Editors have amazing, advanced craft techniques to teach—those subtle elements that will elevate your writing, but we cannot always get to them through the dense forest of backstory dumps and split infinitives.
Relationships are Everything
You need emotional support from other writers. Non-writers simply don’t get it. It’s easy for us to remain in silos, content in our creative silence—especially those of us who are introverts—but it’s invaluable to get out of our heads at just the right moments: when we’re stuck on something, when we get a rejection and feel vulnerable, when we consider never writing again. Writing contests are, largely, a waste of resources that are better spent attending local or national conferences and expanding your network. There are writers out there who will appreciate your freak. Get out there and find them.
Start with the Ugly
This one is all about organization. Be a great project manager. Starting with the ugly is the premise that you first knock out the most undesirable items from your to-do list. I’m a quantity girl. Seeing three-fourths of my smaller gnat-ish tasks with a strikethrough permits me to dive deep into a book for six hours. Protect your creative hours with solid boundaries.
Know Your Secret Sauce
Find the common denominator in your writing, regardless of genre or task. Get to know your voice the way you know your shoe size or height. If you can’t articulate what distinguishes your writing from others, ask someone. If you don’t read your reviews (which is a bit delicate—after all, for longevity, the skin must be thick), ask a writing friend to troll through them and pull out the positive things reviewers mention more than once. Take that intel and write toward it. Make that secret sauce even more tasty.
Nurture Your Inspiration File
Revisit your inspiration notebook when you’re conceptualizing a new idea. I use these scattered nuggets in my clients’ books all the time. Of course, I hold a few of my best ones back, but as you write more, new and better ideas come. They are fireflies in your creative jar, but they don’t stay luminous forever. Give them away, and more will come.
Borrow From the World
Consistent writing space is helpful and solid, but don’t forget to venture out. Writing in other spaces is the perfect antidote to the rut of creation. If cafes aren’t in your budget, libraries and museums are amazing. When writing in public, I pluck details of my surroundings and plant them in my stories like found seeds. One day, those specifics will sprout in the reader’s mind, but at the moment of creation, such a practice feels indulgent and synergistic—a secret known only to you.
Writing longevity isn’t precious. Some days are still filled with bad writing and self-doubt. New clients bring seemingly impossible asks—write as if you’re a boy in 1940s North Korea, you’re barefoot inside a hut in Sierra Leone, you’re the mastermind behind a skyscraper’s structure, you’re inside an arranged marriage at thirteen. It would be easy to say no, I don’t think I can write that. But I did. And I can.
So, too, can you.
My experience extends in all directions. Imagine the power of longevity inside the same industry lane. Whatever your path, listen to those ahead and reach a helpful hand backward to emerging writers. Writing karma is real, and you’ll want to stay on the up side of things.
First published at Writers in the Storm, August 9, 2024.
