{"id":22009,"date":"2014-01-22T06:51:16","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T11:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=22009"},"modified":"2014-01-22T06:51:16","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T11:51:16","slug":"on-persistence-and-the-long-con-of-being-a-successful-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2014\/01\/22\/on-persistence-and-the-long-con-of-being-a-successful-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"On Persistence, And The Long Con Of Being A Successful Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s funny — my post yesterday on how a writing career takes the time that it takes<\/strong><\/a> comes in part from a conversation I was having on Twitter with two amazing writers, Tobias Buckell and Kameron Hurley. Kameron then turned in a guest post for this very blog that seems to come from that same conversation, cut from that same cloth, and the result is a smart and personal post about what it takes to stay on this bucking bull known as a “writing career.” \u00a0This is an amazing read. (Oh, and by the way, her novel, God’s War<\/strong>, is completely awesome, too. I might suggest that if you likes Blackbirds<\/strong>, you may wanna check it out.) So, without further ado:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPersistence.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the answer to a question posed to Kevin J. Anderson in an interview, about what he thought a writer required most in order to succeed in the profession.<\/p>\n

I read that interview when I was 17, hungrily scouring the shelves of the local B. Dalton bookseller for advice on how to be a writer. I\u2019d already sold a nonfiction essay to a local paper by that point, and a short fiction piece for $5 to an early online magazine.<\/p>\n

I felt like I was on the up-and-up. By 24, I figured, I could make a living at this writing thing. By that point I\u2019d been writing with the intent of being a writer since I was 12, and submitting fiction to magazines for two years. Two years feels like a long time, when you\u2019re 17. The rejection letters were piling up. I needed some motivation.<\/p>\n

So I wrote \u201cPersistence\u201d on a sticky note and pasted it to my chunky laptop.<\/p>\n

I have it pasted above my computer monitor, still.<\/p>\n

Persistence.<\/p>\n

The question was, how long?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d soon realize persistence wasn\u2019t an end game. It was the name of the road.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

My first relationship was with a blustering, panic-stricken teen who soon became a violent, delusional young man. We shacked up together soon after I turned 18, and shared a two-bedroom apartment. Lacking a third bedroom, the second bedroom became our shared office. He would blast endless tracks from Rush as he dithered around online while I hunched over my desk, headphones on, trying to write.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long before my writing intensity began to wear on his self-esteem. Apparently, when he was home, and especially when we were in the same room, I needed to be paying more attention to him. I\u2019d soon learn that this odd insistence was part of a larger pattern of seeking to cut me off from friends and family and control more and more aspects of my life \u2013 a classic abuser pattern that I wouldn\u2019t be able to name as such until I started reading feminist theory in my early 20\u2019s and found this behavior named for what it was.<\/p>\n

All I knew at the time was that my focus on writing became a bone of contention. It elicited a lot of screaming fights and passive-aggressive behavior on his part. But as things slowly spiraled out of control in that little apartment, I found that the writing was the one thing I still owned. It helped me push through it. I might be barely scraping by as a hostess at a pizza restaurant, struggling to pay bills on time, but I could build whole worlds that I controlled totally. I could send out stories. I could survive.<\/p>\n

But the deeper I spiraled into depression, the more all the rejection slips hurt. The more it felt like a long slog to nowhere. At my lowest point, I started to fantasize about different ways to off myself. I spent a lot of time crying in the bathroom.<\/p>\n

And then, one day, while writing about a blasted northern landscape in one of my stories, I started to look at how much plane tickets to Alaska cost. I thought, \u201cWell, which is crazier \u2013 booking a one-way plane ticket to Alaska or killing myself?\u201d<\/p>\n

My relationship eventually fell apart. I survived it, despite a lot of screaming and death threats.<\/p>\n

A year later, I booked a one way ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Samuel Delany once said that to succeed at writing, he had to give up everything else. He sacrificed his health, his relationships, in pursuit of becoming the best at what he did. The people who won worked harder than other people. They were willing to sacrifice more.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t date for five years after high school.<\/p>\n

Maybe I was being pathological, I thought. But if I was a dude, who would question it? How many times did Hemingway shut the door and demand a room of his own?<\/p>\n

If relationships meant giving up being a writer, fuck relationships.<\/p>\n

When not rip-roaring drunk (and often, even then) I\u2019d spend most nights in my dorm room in Alaska working on short fiction and collecting more rejection slips. My biggest win during my two years of clattering at the keyboard in college was getting accepted to the Clarion writing workshop when I was 20. This is it, I thought. In two years, for sure, I\u2019ll make it. I just need to keep at this. I can do this.<\/p>\n

I hunkered down for the long haul. I decided I\u2019d return to this crazy dream I had as a kid, to live in a rustic cabin in the woods in Alaska with a couple of husky dogs and just write books. I\u2019d just write books until my fingers bled.<\/p>\n

Clearly, I\u2019d never pissed in an outhouse at 30 below.<\/p>\n

After doing that a few times, I figured it was time to move on.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Durban, South Africa. Cockroaches. Humidity. Nonsensical Celsius temperatures.\u00a0 No air conditioning. Two bottles of wine. A pack of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes. A Master\u2019s thesis and a novel warring for my attention.<\/p>\n

I lived in a one and a half bedroom flat with a partial view of the Indian Ocean, with nothing more than a bed and some cardboard boxes as furniture. I spent most of my time tap-tapping away in the \u201chalf bedroom,\u201d sitting on a rug on the floor, my laptop resting on a cardboard box draped with a sheet. I had books lined up all along the baseboards of the room \u2013 perfect hiding place for cockroaches.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d smoke cigarettes and muse that I\u2019d finally achieved poor writer garret-style living. But like pissing in an outhouse in Alaska at 30 below, the realities weren\u2019t as glamorous as advertised.<\/p>\n

I submitted my first novel to publishers when I was 22, mailing the proposals and chapters out from the university mail room. It was time to be famous.<\/p>\n

Every single house rejected it.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

When I lived in Chicago in my mid-twenties, I\u2019d sometimes go wander around downtown by myself. I had no real plans. No ambition. I\u2019d just wander around this press of people and pretend my life was on the up and up like everybody else\u2019s seemed to be. Chicago is a big, shiny city. Like Oz blooming out of flat Midwestern prairie.<\/p>\n

One night I came home about ten o\u2019clock at night after spending hours alone wandering downtown. Just\u2026 wandering. It was one of those aimless, \u201cWhat the fuck am I doing with my life?\u201d rambles that left me more confused than when I began.<\/p>\n

I stumbled upstairs to my third floor walk-up and went through the mail. In it was a self-addressed stamped envelope: me, mailing a letter to myself. You\u2019d include them with paper submissions, back in the day when hardly anybody took e-subs, so the editor could send you your acceptance or rejection without paying for postage.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d put the name of the magazine I\u2019d submitted my story to on the back of the letter. It was one of the biggest magazines in the field at the time.<\/p>\n

I opened the letter with that gloriously giddy half-hope, half-dread feeling building in the pit of my stomach.<\/p>\n

It was a form rejection letter. The four or sixth or eighth or tenth or\u2026 however many, that month. I could barely keep track. All the stories, and all the rejections, just bled into each other.<\/p>\n

I had no idea what I was doing with my life, except this. I knew I wanted this. Even if \u201cthis\u201d was just some big magazine to say yes to something.<\/p>\n

But \u201cthis\u201d was just one long road of rejection and disappointment.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange, but I don\u2019t remember the name of the actual magazine, because it has since closed up shop.<\/p>\n

But I remember sitting on the kitchen floor, despondent, the rejection slip clutched in my hand.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

At 26, I woke up in the ICU after two days in a coma and was diagnosed with a chronic illness. I received a bunch of rejections from agents for a new book not long after. One of them expressed outrage that I\u2019d be so bold as to compare the book I was shopping to the work of Robert Jordan or George R.R. Martin, even though the query book I\u2019d read said to compare your work to other marketable work. I filed away the rejections and wondered if I\u2019d ever sell a book. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe I\u2019d given up everything for nothing.<\/p>\n

I lost my job at the Chicago architectural and engineering firm I worked for a few months later. And a few months after that, my relationship with my best friend, former girlfriend, and roommate imploded.<\/p>\n

I found myself packing up everything I owned into the back of a rental truck with a couple of generous friends and driving my life to Dayton, Ohio.<\/p>\n

It felt like I\u2019d failed at everything. Life was a ruin.<\/p>\n

I found myself living in a spare bedroom at a friend\u2019s house, unemployed, deep in medical debt, and staring at yet another novel, three-quarters of the way finished.<\/p>\n

When I opened my laptop, the sticky note still stared back at me: Persistence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In all things. In writing. In life.<\/p>\n

I finished the book.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d reached a point in my life where I didn\u2019t know how to do anything else but finish the fucking book.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

I got my first book deal when I was 28.<\/p>\n

It came at a time when I\u2019d hit rock bottom, professionally, financially, emotionally. It came just when I needed it. It wasn\u2019t a million dollars. It was $10,000 a book, for three books. It was enough money for me to pay off three of my four credit cards and move out of my friend\u2019s spare room.<\/p>\n

Even when the contract was eventually cancelled, and the book never published at that house, I was still paid for the books. I still walked with the money. $30,000 for work I never did, for work that they wouldn\u2019t publish.<\/p>\n

I thought about all that work. About those screaming nights in that shared office with my ex, and the cold, drunk nights in Alaska, and shaking out my bug-infested sheets in South Africa, and thought\u2026 was this it? Was this what it was about?<\/p>\n

That money saved my life. But when the bills were paid and my life was in order again, I asked myself what I was writing for besides money, because after writing with the intent of being a writer for fifteen years, now that I wasn\u2019t dying in poverty, the money alone wasn\u2019t satisfying. It wasn\u2019t enough. It wasn\u2019t why I was writing.<\/p>\n

Which made me wonder what the fuck I was doing, then.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Another book deal, this time a keeper, a year after my former deal imploded. Books on shelves. Elation. Joy. End of a long road, right?<\/p>\n

No. Just beginning.<\/p>\n

Arguments with my publisher over white-washed book covers. Late checks. Money that stops flowing. Then the publisher implodes, sells off its assets \u2013 including you and your books.<\/p>\n

Take it over leave it. Fight the bullshit. Rage.<\/p>\n

Sheer, unadulterated rage, that the work I spent a lifetime to see in print is now an \u201casset\u201d a \u201cproperty\u201d a casualty of shitty business practices.<\/p>\n

I fight the situation. I persist.<\/p>\n

I sign a new contract.<\/p>\n

The spice flows again.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve lost my joy for fiction.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

I\u2019m at the bar at a science fiction convention. I made $7,000 in fiction income the year before. I\u2019m ordering an overpriced drink that I\u2019ll be writing off as a business expense, because I\u2019ll likely lose 30% of that $7,000 to taxes in a few months.<\/p>\n

While I wait, I overhear a successful self-published author talking to a group of folks about how self-publishing can make everyone big money, and how traditional publishing is fucked. I\u2019ve heard this a thousand times. Kickstarter is the key, he says. You can pre-fund all that work ahead of time, and generate income. He boasts about how he gave this advice to many under-advanced authors, folks paid, \u201cThese $7,000, $10,000 advances,\u201d who were obviously small, silly fish. He sounds like a self-help guru. He makes writing books sound like a get-rich-quick scheme.<\/p>\n

I take my drink. I don\u2019t pour it on his head.<\/p>\n

I remember this is a long game. I remember that both self-published authors and trad-published authors have the same small handful of breakouts and the same massive, slushy mire of \u201ceveryone else\u201d clamoring for signal on the long tail.<\/p>\n

I think I\u2019ve been on the long tail a long time, but the more I talk to other writers the more I realize that that whole slog \u2013 the shitty apartment with the shitty boyfriend, the frigid outhouses in Alaska, the cockroach wrangling in South Africa \u2013 weren\u2019t actually the start of it. That wasn\u2019t the part where things got really interesting.<\/p>\n

It was getting the first book. It was after the first book. It was being confronted with the fact that writing is a business, and expectations are very often crushed, and your chances for breaking out are pretty grim.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s persisting in the game after<\/em> you know what it\u2019s really all about. After the shine wears off. It\u2019s persisting after all your hopes and aspirations bang head first into reality.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when it starts. The rest of your life was just a warm-up.<\/p>\n

Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Last night I rolled in from a convention in Detroit at 6:00 p.m. and stayed up until 1:00 a.m. catching up on business emails and preparing blog posts. I still have a day job. I also do a lot of freelance copywriting. Putting all that income together, I\u2019m making close to $90,000 a year. But I\u2019ve only been at that number for two years. Six months ago, half my department was laid off at the day job. I expect the hammer to come down at any time.<\/p>\n

I expect that sometime soon, everything will burn down, and I\u2019ll have to start over.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m working on another trilogy. Two of them, actually. I try not to squint too much at my prior sales numbers. It might affect my game.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m working all the time.<\/p>\n

In the book I\u2019m best known for, God\u2019s War<\/em>, my protagonist has a final showdown with the book\u2019s antagonist, who tells her, \u201cThere are no happy endings, Nyxnissa.\u201d And Nyx says, \u201cI know. Life keeps going.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

I\u2019m packing up my stuff after a panel where I\u2019ve spoken about all sorts of things to other writers, aspiring writers, and fans alike. I\u2019m feeling drained and exhausted. An audience member comes up to me and thanks me for talking about my day job. \u201cYou just seem so successful,\u201d he says, \u201cyou\u2019ve got multiple books published and you go to cons.\u201d Later, somebody at the bar tells me it seems that every time he clicked on a link these days it linked back to one of my blog posts.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t feel successful.<\/p>\n

But it got me to thinking again \u2013 what\u2019s my measure of success? Is it money? Copies sold? Or is it the act of persistence itself, the act of continuing to write when everybody tells you it\u2019s a bad deal, and you should just suck it up and stop?<\/p>\n

Persistence, I realized, was not the end goal. It was the actual game.<\/p>\n

I had all the chances in the world to quit this game. Any rational person probably would have. Poverty, unemployment, crazy relationships, chronic illness, an imploding publisher\u2026 I could have quit. I could have said, \u201cFuck this noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

But after raging around on the internet or drinking a bottle of wine or taking a long bike ride, I came back to the keyboard. Always. I always came back.<\/p>\n

Most people don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t blame them.<\/p>\n

So when people ask me now \u2013 at panels, online, at the bar \u2013 \u201cWhat does it take to be a successful writer?\u201d I know the answer, now. Now, more than ever, because I know what it actually means. I know it\u2019s not just a word. It\u2019s a way of life. I know what success looks like.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersistence,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

And take another drink.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Kameron Hurley is the award-winning author of the books God\u2019s War<\/em><\/strong><\/span>,<\/a> Infidel<\/em><\/strong><\/span>,<\/a> and Rapture<\/em><\/strong><\/span>.<\/a> Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed<\/em><\/strong><\/span>,\u00a0<\/a>EscapePod<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span>, and\u00a0Strange Horizons<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span>, and anthologies such as\u00a0The Lowest Heaven<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/em><\/a>and\u00a0<\/em>Year\u2019s Best SF<\/strong><\/span>.<\/em>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Visit kameronhurley.com<\/a><\/strong><\/span> for upcoming projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s funny — my post yesterday on how a writing career takes the time that it takes comes in part from a conversation I was having on Twitter with two amazing writers, Tobias Buckell and Kameron Hurley. Kameron then turned in a guest post for this very blog that seems to come from that same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-5IZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22009"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22017,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22009\/revisions\/22017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}