Sustainable Writing and Publishing

Hi everyone, welcome to 2018!

What if I told you that writing as much as humanly possible and publishing as much as humanly possible…wasn’t necessarily the best way to go?

I’ve written before about all of the research I’ve done over the question ‘can you make a living as a writer?’ and I’ve learned so much about the industry.  And one of the things I’ve learned is that many of the new authors who make a living these days often do so through volume – they write and publish, a lot.

I should have dug deeper.  But then, the self-publishing market is kind of a new thing, relatively speaking.  Who knew where the trend was going to go?

In reading a recent blog article by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which led me to another, and then to another, the market has matured, and many self-published authors are trying to write more to keep up.

Writers are getting burned out.  And many of the new big-hitters from the past decade have apparently disappeared.

Burnout can be a problem in any career, any job.  But Rusch made a very good point in her blogs:

“If you want to sustain your writing and publishing businesses, you have to stop thinking like a manufacturer. You need to start thinking like an artisan. By that I mean, you are “a person or company that makes a high-quality or distinctive product in small quantities, usually by hand or using traditional methods.””

When I read that article, it made me think about my own experience turning out a novel in record time.  When I wrote Chronicles of the Sentinels – Legacy, I developed, wrote, and put it through two rounds of editing/proofreading in 3 months.  I was proud of myself for that.

However, the product wasn’t the best it could be.  I finished it on a deadline to pitch it at a writer’s conference, and the pitch went well, but when the agent read the product itself, she said that it needed a lot of work.  And she was right.

More than that, I had spent every single night after work, and every single weekend day, working on it as much as I possibly could.  That on top of a full time job meant I had time for little else except the essentials (grocery shopping, etc.)  That kind of effort was unsustainable.  It was exhausting

Making the Strongest Product You Can

Writing fiction is an art.  This includes in the cinema, although Disney seems to have turned it into a manufacturing job based on their extremely aggressive Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars Universe release schedule.  To their credit, they have probably dozens of writers working on the stories.  But they’ve also run into problems (and thus keep having to fire directors and restart filming on Star Wars movies, always citing ‘creative differences.’)

For those of us who don’t have an entire team of writers at our beck and call, putting out a novel a month, even one every three months, is insane.  I’ve even read that many consider one per year to be aggressive for a single writer.

And when a writer burns out, there’s no one else around to pick up the slack for them.  Their business growth falters.  Their income slows or stops.  And if they didn’t plan ahead for that…they’re in trouble.

It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint

As Rusch stated, being a self-published writer is a marathon, not a sprint.  Sprinting is not sustainable long-term.  And I’ve come to understand (even if I unconsciously knew it before) that the only way to eventually ‘make it’ as a writer is to settle in for the long-haul.  And to not jump the gun.

I want to write full time, badly.  Writing is my passion.  That’s why I’ve been doing it for well over 20 years.  And I’ve come such a long way in the past 3 years.

I also have a long ways to go.  And sprinting to that finish line wouldn’t be the best idea in the world.  I’ll arrive exhausted, if I even make it there at all.  And then I won’t be able to keep going.

A novel in 3 months is impressive, but that novel won’t be ready for publication for a long time.  In the mean time, I have the Sword of Dragons series to finish.

Release Schedule?

One of the things I’m having to let go is the ability to have a dead-locked release schedule.  I originally had a plan to finish the Sword of Dragons series by 2020.  It’s now 2018 and I haven’t even finished writing book 3.

And that’s okay.  I’m going at the pace I can sustain while maintaining life and sanity.  Plus, more than ever, I’m convinced that my re-branding of the series is a worthwhile move.

Because it took me over 2 years to learn that releasing the best product that I can, rather than a mediocre product at a fast pace, is more important.

When a reader pays $15 for a print novel or $5 for an eBook, they’re investing more than just money – reading takes time.  And investment in the characters.  They’re taking a risk by buying your product, especially if they have never heard of you before, or your story.

So make it the best damn novel you can.  I don’t just mean the writing, either.  Make it the best product that you can.

And however long that takes is however long it takes.

-Jon Wasik

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