I published my first ebook, Winterland, as an experiment. That was a year ago October. (Next week, Tuesday the 13th, I’ll be releasing my Short Story 
Collection, Subterranea.) Last week, I received my third quarter royalty check from Smashwords for Winterland and was pleasantly surprised.
It takes a lot to surprise me. Which, I think, is good for a writer.
Anyway, I have made significantly less money from Winterland than I have from my two trad published novels. However, the money I’ve made from The Resurrection (2011) and The Telling (2012), has all come by way of advance. I have yet to see a royalty check (authors must earn back their advances before they can receive royalties). Hopefully, that will change in 2013. I don’t know. Either way, I’ll keep plodding forward in my writing. With or without fat, rewarding, regular, career-affirming royalty checks.
Yesterday, my literary agent Rachelle Gardner posted a rather motivational article entitled There Is No Time for Despair, although there are people that prefer to get their inspiration from motivational quotes online. In the article she begins by listing a host of things writers can despair about, things like
- Many authors who have published numerous books are finding their advances going down, not up.
- With self-published books now plentiful, there are more books than ever before for readers to choose from.
- A book’s potential sales are highly unpredictable.
- Many authors’ books don’t live up to the publisher’s sales expectations, meaning the publisher might not want to renew their contract.
It may be a coincidence, but I personally know at least a half dozen authors who’ve recently been dropped by publishers because they didn’t “live up to the publisher’s sales expectations.” It’s one of those hard, but commonplace realities of the writing biz. And it always produces at least a twinge of despair.
But one of Rachelle’s points particularly hit home:
- The publishing journey often doesn’t live up to an author’s expectations.
I’m a pessimist at heart. Frankly, my pessimism has saved me many times. It’s been said, “A pessimist is never disappointed.” Which could explain why I rarely get down or disappointed about my writing career. You see,
- despite the slog
- despite some bad reviews
- despite not being re-contracted by my first publisher
- despite not being a marketing expert
- despite having to do the bulk of my own marketing
- despite not cracking the royalty threshold on my published novels
- despite having to keep my full-time job, write whenever I possibly can (which usually means 4 AM and lunchbreak), and feeling constantly crunched for time
despite all these difficulties — I rarely despair, get moody, or vow to bail on writing.
And a lot of this comes down to “author expectations.”
I keep mine very low.
Please, don’t mistake my low expectations for mediocrity, a concession to poor sales, disregard for conventional wisdom, low self-esteem, or a defeatist attitude. In a way, it’s a survival skill. I’ve seen too many authors crash and burn because they had unrealistic expectations.
- They expected to be agented and contracted.
- They expected all their friends to be thrilled and intrigued by their writing pursuits (instead of looking at them cross-eyed).
- They expected to sell books.
- They expected to make some money. Maybe, a lot of money.
- They expected to generate buzz.
- They expected to get good reviews.
- They expected to get a lot of good reviews.
- They expected to gain a reading audience, a lively base of fans who can’t wait for anything they write.
Is it any wonder they succumb to despair?
Of course, I can rightly be charged with being a pessimist and having too low of expectations. You’re right. The thing is, I’m just trying to keep expectations in their place.
- I have low expectations for what I CAN’T control.
- I have high expectations for what I CAN control.
That’s a huge distinction. Which is why Rachelle closes her post with these words:
You need to refuse to spend time worrying about things over which you have no control (the publishing industry at large, for instance) and focus on what you CAN influence.
Writers don’t have control of a lot of things. And if you tie your expectations to things you can’t control, despair is inevitable.
- Expecting everyone will love your stuff.
- Expecting to sell more books than you do.
- Expecting that people will automatically respond to every marketing effort.
- Expecting mostly good reviews of your novels.
- Expecting a writing career to be easy.
- Expecting to find your niche and sail off into the sunset.
Listen, these are the kinds of unrealistic expectations that can kill a writing career. At the least, they will drain you of the joy, imagination, camaraderie and appreciation for the business and the craft that is so desperately needed to keep plugging away.
Call them low expectations if you want. But these are the things I have control over and build my expectations around:
- I expect to improve as a writer.
- I expect not everyone will “get” me.
- I expect to have to work hard to make a name for myself.
- I expect to have to motivate myself.
- I expect to have to learn more about the industry and stay on top of trends.
- I expect to expand my circle of writing friends.
- I expect to have disappointments and letdowns.
- I expect to have to change direction, eat crow, and stay flexible.
- I expect to make mistakes along the way.
- I expect my writing career to not go as planned.
Yeah. I’m a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy. I purposely keep my expectations low. This doesn’t mean I don’t expect a lot from myself. It means I don’t expect a lot from anyone else BUT me.
Sometimes I feel that having high expectations that my writing will be great, will be considered ‘art’, will sell great, just induce paralysis in the writing process. I’m trying to channel my inner pulp fiction writer— to be recognized as a writer able to produce a book that’s a good read— rather than aiming at being called the next Shakespeare.
I have had lifelong struggles with ‘writer’s block’ (which doesn’t exist). I hope that by re-imagining my writing career in a humbler frame I can generate new hope. Because I won’t give up. Since I have Asperger Syndrome, being a writer seems to be the one productive thing I might do with my life that people actually believe I’m capable of doing.
Nissa, don’t give up. Praying that you “re-imagine a writing career” that is both productive and satisfying.
Once again, I’m the first to comment–you see how often I’m checking email for word from publishers…BUT I’m expecting rejections. So I”m with you on the pessimism thing. Expect nothing, be pleasantly surprised when something happens.
At the same time, I totally agree–expect the BEST from yourself. What you can control. Set goals and make them. Jump through the necessary hoops (get critiqued. keep going. keep querying/proposing/writing).
GREAT post. Many times I feel “faithless” in this process, since I don’t expect much. But at the same time, deep down, I DO expect my writing to influence people–if it’s ever given a chance. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be writing for publication. At all.
Yee haw! You’re on a roll, Mikey. 🙂 Another good post.
No kidding! I just tweeted that. @CerebralGrump is knocking the blogposts outta the park. (I’m going to quit blogging and just read his…ha).
How right you are…
Excellent! I love the distinction — have high expectations for what you can change, and none for what you can’t. It’s also a good reminder for me — I can write. I can rewrite. I can make it stronger, faster, better. But I can’t force someone else to buy it!
I’m naturally an optimist, it’s my nature to hope and to want to look for the good, but life has a way of teaching the wise to be stingy with our expectations and not to set them too high. We’re happiest if we can work hard and hope for the best yet be content no matter what comes our way.
Being in the fanfiction arena for so many years has taught me all of these same things. Not everybody will like your work. Not everybody will bother to read your work. But if you’re writing because you love it, who cares?
Also, grats on your pleasantly surprising royalty check! That’s a nice little feather in your cap. 🙂
I had high expectations when my first book came out and I have low expectations for my novel coming out in February. I learned a lot about publishing, about marketing and about everyone else in my life related to my writing on my first book, and I arrived at a similar place as you: Nobody else cares if you write. You can look at that as a bad thing, or you can look at it as no pressure. I choose to look at it as no pressure and have no expectation anyone will help me and that I’ll have to ask 500 people to get three. It’s okay. People are busy. Not everyone has to love you. But yes, you can grow with each effort, and that’s an accomplishment. Not every adult has something in their life forcing them to grow. What a great post — thanks for writing it.
Mike,
This comment is off-topic, but I wasn’t sure how to share this.
After reading your book Resurrection, I visited your blog some time ago and read about your grappling with the place for fiction, specifically speculative fiction, in contemporary Christendom. Today, I happened upon this quote from an interview with author Jonathan Rogers about his Flannery O’Conner biography. It immediately reminded of your musings about Christian publishing, and thought you might find it interesting:
Rogers said: “We Protestants aren’t looking to inhabit mysteries; we’re looking for explanations, solutions, household hints. Just stroll through a Christian bookstore. Seven Steps to This, Ten Steps to That, Your Best Life Now! It’s all very pragmatic and solution-oriented, thoroughly modern and slickly marketed. The modern/post-modern impulse is an impulse toward demystification, and American Protestantism is right in the middle of it.
“O’Connor’s sacramental vision frees the Christian writer from the tyranny of “edification.” We assume that the Christian writer’s job is to edify the reader – which is true enough, I suppose – but we have such a narrow definition of edification.
“What passes for edification is, to borrow a term from O’Connor, “Instant Uplift.” It doesn’t invite us into a mystery. It’s “safe for the whole family,” as the billboards for the Christian radio stations say. I don’t know that the Bible is safe for the whole family. It’s hard to imagine Christian bookstores stocking a book so wild and ragged and mysterious as the Bible if it weren’t the Bible.”
Do you think that Christians, and Christian publishers, have a definition for edification that is too narrow? Would you say that your stories have an aspect of mystery to them, intentional or otherwise?
Thanks,
Dave
Dave, that term “the tyranny of edification” seems fitting. I think the operative term in the CF industry is Inspiration, rather than edification, because Inspiration is more easily conjured (and less substantive) than edification. So I’d definitely say the current CF market’s expectations are “too low.” I’ve written before about the importance of ambiguity in our fiction and how demanding too stringent of a theological ruler to our stories is dangerous. (You can find a lot of those posts just by searching “Christian Fiction” on this site.) Anyway, that’s a huge subject. Thanks for asking. Maybe we can talk more about it. Feel free to drop me an email.
I’m pretty much either Eeyore of Grumpy Smurf: “If it is good advice, which I doubt” vs “I hate advice!” Oh, well. I have hope for the future. I always do. If I could only nix the immediate pessimism that weighs down my days. But, as you say, pessimism does prevent me from getting my hopes up on so many things I can’t control.
Not to revisit an old battleground, but this is exactly why I’m hoping my author friends start to wean themselves away from the expectations fostered in a different time. The fantasies many authors harbour of writing a book, handing it off to a publishing house and then getting checks in the mail every three months are really–for the most part–dreams of another era. It’s sort of the writer’s version of an autoworker’s lost dream of a company that will employ her from cradle to grave and offer a livable pension for retirement.
The paradigms have all started to drift into the wind.
I have joined the esteemed ranks of the “released from your contract” circle of authors. And yet, I do not despair. I will press on with book four and five — already written — either on my own as you have done or with a new publisher (there is one interested). When you expect the worst, any good at all is exciting!
Enjoyed your first book and the second one will be arriving soon. Hope to see more.
Mike,
Totally agree with your “pessimist” description. I often tell my wife yes, I do look on the downside of things, and when they go better than expected I’m pleasantly surprised.
“They expected all their friends to be thrilled and intrigued by their writing pursuits (instead of looking at them cross-eyed).” — Love that one! Most people I talk to about my writing do give me a sort of cross-eyed look. But then, they aren’t nerds.
I’d have to get a career first. I’m still muddling through it. But yeah, so right about worrying about what you can control, and not just in writing. Life too. Good post.
The Apostle had some wonderful things to say about Godly contentment in our expectations of this world… 🙂
A lot of interesting research has been conducted along these lines. In short, both optimism and pessimism turn out to be forms of motivation. Those who rank higher in optimism (which tends to correlate with Extroversion: “people people”) have a “promotion focus”…they are excited by visions/dreams of “what could go right.” They look for, and expect, positive feedback, which in turn creates motivation to grow. Pessimists, on the other hand (often associated with Introverts: “thinkers & analytic types”) are motivated to avoid letdown. Therefore, they tend to see the world in less rosy terms, preferring to deal upfront with unpleasant realities.
Both are legitimate coping strategies… Life (like writing for publication) can be unpredictable, frustrating, and uncooperative. Optimists handle this by attempting to put the best possible spin on events, even if that means believing that things will turn out better for you than for everyone else (Google “Optimism bias”).
As you and several commenters have noted, pessimists choose a different approach… Protect yourself from dashed hopes by starting with fewer expectations. Save yourself from disappointment.
In the end, you draw a critical distinction: your expectations for “success,” and your commitment to improving, are two separate issues.
One of the “Parental Proverbs” I’ve indoctrinated my family with is: “Expect the worst, and hope for the best.” It’s definitely a coping / survival mechanism I’ve developed from growing up with latent talent but insufficient environmental stimuli to nurture it (see: dysfunctional upbringing). The downside is that praise doesn’t do much for me either. Don’t get me wrong — I want good book reviews! It’s just I’ve become so cynical as to believe that people who praise you and pan you are equally wrong. Sigh. Is there something I can take for this, doc?
Nope. According to that fount of wisdom, Lady Gaga, you were born this way.
Seriously, you put your finger on one of the defining characteristics of the extroversion/introversion spectrum: introverts are more motivated by *internal* judgments & values (“Am I performing up to my standards?” “Am I happy with me?”) while extroverts place considerably more emphasis on *external* evidence (“Do other people love my work?” “Do they appreciate me?”).
Brain science shows that the pleasure centers of the mind literally “light up” electrically to a greater degree in extroverts. They get a physiologically bigger buzz out of praise, attention, recognition, etc. Therefore, they act in ways designed to “go after” that reward. Introverts, on the other hand, have a biologically muted response to rewards…especially external rewards. They just don’t feel it or value it to the same extent extroverts do, (being more inner-directed) so they don’t go out of their way to fish for it.
Wow. Did I ever need to read this. I am one of those writers who is unagented and uncontracted. I had an agent who I thought might sincerely be interested, but she retired. Then both of my parents passed away. I’m an only child. I pretty much spiraled down, down, down. I pushed on and forced myself to send the first pages of my second novel to the Genesis contest. I finaled in the young adult category, but the agent who requested my manuscript sent me a rejection letter a few weeks ago. I’m not really discouraged. I just feel as though I’m in the middle of the forest, sitting on a rock without a compass or a GPS and wondering what do I do now. Oh, yeah, and by the way, it’s getting dark.
I think maybe your blog is a handy flashlight to help me find the path.
I just finished THE TELLING about ten minutes ago. I think I stumbled upon the book by providence or serendipity, as I like to call it. I’ve had many unusual situations to filter into my life, and The Telling, though fiction, touched on many of them.
Your flashlight may become even more handy than I ever realized.
Thank you for your perseverance. Your writing makes a difference.