Posted: 28 May 2014 04:34 PM PDT
I
was talking to an acquaintance today who I haven’t seen for years. He
asked what I’ve been up to. I told him, with whatever sincerity I could
muster, “I’m an author.”
His reaction was interesting. First, you could see his eyes widen and
a look cross his face like, ah, you slick bastard, if anyone could
figure out how to make money for nothing, it would be you. Because
everyone knows that authors basically sit around and stare at things
like the slow kid in elementary school in between bouts of binge
drinking, and occasionally, and I do mean as infrequently as the media
reports anything resembling the truth, write something.
Which may not be far from the mark, but still. Ouch, you know?
*******
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*******
So anyway, he then said what I’ve heard so many times that it’s all I
can do not to drive my stiffened fingers through the speaker’s thorax.
“Oh, that’s great. I’ve been thinking about writing a book, too. I just never have the time.”
My response? “Yeah, I can see how that would be tempting for an
attorney like yourself. I totally understand the feeling. I’ve been
thinking of arguing a case before the Supreme Court, but just never find
the time.”
Or if it’s a doctor, “I know what you mean. I’ve been thinking about
performing open heart surgery, you know, to get it off my bucket list,
but life keeps getting in the way.”
Now don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of folks who are uploading
their ill-crafted screeds onto Amazon and pressing “publish,” so the
stereotype that basically any idiot can be an author isn’t that much of a
stretch. I suppose what bugs me is to be lumped in with the person who
spent all of minutes learning their craft, wrote their little ditty with
about as much care and attention as I devote to wolfing down a pop
tart, and published it.
People don’t seem to get that it’s easy to be a contestant in an
open-call talent show. But it’s fairly infrequent to make it to the
finals. One does not equate to the other. And being an author that makes
a living is akin to being in an open talent show with a million
entrants, and only a few thousand finalists, if that.
Perhaps the biggest irritant is the perception that being a writer
sort of something you do when you’re bored working your greeter job at
Walmart. Perhaps being a bad or marginal writer is, but being a good one
is an elusive goal. I’d argue it’s the hardest work I’ve ever done, and
I’ve never shied away from challenges. But being a self-published
author tops the list, more difficult than it was learning architecture
and going on to design dozens of large custom homes, or operating a
construction company that specialized in the absolutely highest end for
the most demanding people on Earth, or running a successful
international import/export firm in dozens of jurisdictions, or making
wine with one of the biggest wineries in Argentina…I could go on, but
the point is that I’ve done a few tough things which required a fair
amount of effort and mental dexterity, and writing makes them all look
like child’s play.
The unfair part, is, of course, that being a good, or even great,
writer, doesn’t mean squat. I mean, I’m guessing, not because I am one.
But play along – the point is that you can be really, really good, and
it’s still no assurance that you’ll make any money at this, much less
have a career. If you go the trad route, especially now, if your work
doesn’t fit in a tidy pigeonhole that represents exactly what a
committee of acquisitions editors determines is the most commercially
viable (meaning easiest to sell, in their opinion, forgetting for a
moment that 90% or so of everything they sign fails to sell much),
safest choice, you won’t get a deal.
The point is that if you pursue the trad route, the odds are
overwhelmingly that you won’t ever get offered anything, and if you do,
that it will be such a shit deal that only a moron would sign it. That’s
not such great news for those who devote the ten thousand hours to
mastering their craft.
If you go the indie route, the odds of making some money are better,
but still stink. The good news is that while your odds of being an
outlier who earns tens of millions a year as an indie are almost nil,
your odds of being one of the emerging middle class that earns a good to
great living are far better than going trad. But they’re still crap. I
mean, imagine being handed a revolver with a chamber that held ten
thousand rounds, only one of which wasn’t loaded, and volunteering to
hold it to your head and pull the trigger, versus being handed one with
the significantly better odds of only a thousand rounds chambered and
one empty.
Still not great odds.
I counsel authors to write because you love it – to do so for any
other reason is delusional given the actual odds of making more than
beer money. But that’s different than saying that writing well is easy,
or that anyone can do it, hence the poor odds. It’s more like because
there are so few slots and it’s such a mercurial business that you can
have a thousand wildly gifted authors, and only a few will catch. It’s
still extremely hard work to be any of those thousand. I know to laymen
it often doesn’t seem that way, but it is.
So if you’re someone who has always thought about writing a book but
never found the time, perhaps you’re lucky. Because it’s only once you
try something that you appreciate how difficult it is to make it look
easy. I think that’s what many miss. They see a gymnast or a dancer
executing impossibly hard routines and making it look effortless, and
mistake that because, when done well, IT’S SUPPOSED TO SEEM EFFORTLESS
TO THE AUDIENCE, it must be effortless to execute, too.
Not so much.
End of rant. I spent my day uploading crap to Wattpad and doing cover
stuff and writing this blog, and now the day’s gone and I have to find
5K words somewhere in my head. That will keep me working till midnight.
Again. Like I did yesterday. And the day before. And the day before
that.
It really ain’t as easy as it looks. Like most passions, do it
because you enjoy it, not because you expect a reward other than the
work itself.
Sucks, but there it is.
Thank God for tequila.
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