First, I’m really sorry to be late. I woke up with a sore throat and then various family/household things intruded so I’m only now sitting down to write.
Second, I meant to write about other stuff, but I’m going to write about Whirlpools, because I have one brain cell and it’s being pulled five ways.
When I took the Oregon workshops back in pre-history, when we chiseled stories on stone, Dean Smith said something I didn’t understand at all for a long time. He talked about “whirlpools.”
Whirlpools aren’t all or necessarily bad, but if you think of your career as a river, those whirlpools are what stops your progress and, sometimes, makes you circle and circle and go down the drain.
In traditional publishing there used to be many of these. When I ran a small press magazine in 93, (financially ruinous, but the best lessons I got in career management and grabbing the reader before meeting Kris and Dean) I would get short story submissions from people with three pages of credits, all of them from pays in copies and small press mags.
A lot of these people had a reputation at cons and in small, literary circles, and the thing was, when I read them I could tell they’d adapted their style to sell to literary and little. (Which, since we were trying to be pulp-like was not at all right for us, but that’s something else.) The very thing that made them successful in this tiny pond made it impossible for them to move on to the greater ocean.
Now, I don’t know most of those people, so I can’t say what they were doing was a whirlpool. It’s entirely possibly they were retired or otherwise financially independent and what they wanted out of life was to write a lot of quirky stories. If so, more power to them. My career isn’t theirs, my mind is not theirs, what I want out of life is my own problem, not theirs and vice-versa.
On the other hand I met some of them later, and what they wanted was to break into novels, in which case being caught in the small pond of literary and little was the wrong thing to do. Many, many credits, when you know they didn’t get paid a cent for any of them, help no one. There were some magazines in fact that put me off buying the person if I chanced to read credits first. (I tried not to. I wanted to judge the story on its merits.)
There are other whirlpools, though, some of them when you’re published and doing well. I could easily at one time have opted to let my daylight career die and write nothing but novelizations of historic figures. At the time they paid me more than anything else, they sold well (still do) and while I got no credit, I got royalties. Also, its incredibly easy, particularly for Tudor England. But I realized it was a whirlpool, and I stepped back in time.
Because what I wanted to do was write science fiction and make enough money to live off of, which these other things could come close to but wouldn’t manage. I mean, the income was fixed. It wouldn’t go up as I became known.
Mind you, the work was pleasant and innocuous. Most other people get write for hire in franchises, and those can destroy your individual writing voice and your cuing. (Look you don’t have to show that Kirk is a good guy. The audience knows that. You lose you edge for how to show things like that.) I fell into writing historical fiction, something that not even my worst enemy could hold against me.
But over time, as nothing came out of me under my name, in the daylight, nothing I could admit to, it meant my real career would die, and I’d be stuck writing about dead English Queens for a decent, but fixed income. (Put it this way, to support my family I’d need to do 12 books a year, and the publisher didn’t have need for that many.)
To tell if you’ve been caught in a whirlpool, I’d need to know what your goals are. There is a local writer, just beginning, who got an agent for his novel and seemed to be making great strides. But for the last three years, he’s been writing two stories a month for pays-in-copies anthologies, because it gives him “validation” and he hasn’t finished his novel nor done anything with it. When we tried to talk to him about it, he got defensive. He wants to see his name in print and on the shelf, and he doesn’t seem to “get” this doesn’t further his cause of eventually living from his writing. (And he needs to do it, because he’s unemployed and has a family to support.) He thinks if he has a mass of unpaid credits it will help sell his novel. It won’t. In fact – I’ve tried to tell him that, also – since his novel isn’t Baen-like, right now if I were him, I’d be finishing it and slamming it up on Amazon. And his small press credits count for nothing there.
He’s caught between conflicting needs for validation and money. He’s in a whirlpool. If he doesn’t pull off, he’ll never finish that novel, and he’ll never become a professional.
I don’t know where you guys are in your writing careers, and you might be as blind to your whirlpools as I was to mine when Dean talked about them.
Strange things can become whirpools. For instance, for a while I had a really good critique/support group. REALLY good. The problem was I was dependent on it. I depended on their approval to have enough gumption to submit. If they didn’t say “it’s good” I didn’t know if it was. When the group broke up, I spent a year paralyzed and almost not writing.
Now I have alphas and betas, but I make I it a point not to give their word power over whether I submit or not. They haven’t read the last two stories I sold, for instance.
So, I can’t tell you what to do. But I can tell you this: write down your goals. Then look at what you’re doing, even if it’s something you enjoy, even if it’s a “net positive” for now. What will get you to your goals? What is standing in the way of them?
It might seem crazy to say give up your write for hire historicals in favor of indie publishing that might never pay. But Indie might be able to get you there – hypothetically – and the write for hire historical never will. In which case, it’s the sane thing to do.
Remember two things: Money flows to the writer, and it should be adequate to the effort. Also, your time is money. Don’t devalue yourself. You might think “But no one would pay for my writing.” You don’t know that. No one will pay if you don’t try to sell. If you don’t bet you can’t win.
Now get off that whirlpool and swim for the shore!
Mad Genius Club 
27 responses to “Whirlpools”
Interesting. I just wrote last night about feeling stuck–I called it “bat country” from Hunter Thompson. The same concept, though, I feel like I am stuck in between working a day job and writing for a living, and while I have excellent reviews of my first novel, the cash flow isn’t there. I’m about to release my second, and I’m scared that it’s going to be the same story–a lot of people love it, but not many will buy it.
My question back to you is, how do we know when to stop paddling against the current and go back to the shore? Not everyone who wants to be a writer actually has the talent to make a living at it–how can I tell if I’m one of the also-rans? Do you feel that there comes a time when the thing to do is just admit that you’ve given it your best shot and it didn’t work?
It builds, Misha. In Indie it’s as much persistence and more stuff out as quality. And quality actually is the least important. Keep trying. If you’re like me, you’re exhausted. But keep on.
[…] Completely different post over at Mad Genius Club: Whirlpools. […]
People sent in their story-resumes along with their stories? What? Why? When did this start to be desired? I know it’s been a zillion years since I read Writer’s Digest, but I don’t recall that ever being advised for cover letters back in the 1980’s. How freaking decadent has the market become?
It’s been like that since I started submitting in the late eighties, Suburban. And to be READ at Analog or Asimov’s you needed at least ONE semi-pro credit.
I remember being told to have a cover letter for short story submissions… if there was anything to put in it. So… “It was great to meet you at GeneriCon. Here’s the story we talked about.” would be best… A mention of other publications would be second best. But I can’t imagine having three pages. Half a page, tops! And if you didn’t have anything to put in the letter, best to skip it. After all, it’s not as though they’ll be confused as to what the manuscript in the mail was for and all your info is on the front page above the title anyway.
Granted, the best I ever did was a form rejection or two so… (And now it’s all electronic isn’t it? I haven’t submitted anywhere in far too long.)
I had a class this spring that was for students with a professional writing internship. Our actual class time was “job hunting 101” and we had to prepare resumes. I was shocked by how many of the students had resumes three pages long… with paragraphs of text. And I wondered who would read something that long? Mine was one page… total. I got rather insecure about it so I asked my husband who sees lots of resumes in the computer field and I asked my “mentors” that I had signed up for in geology and “gas and oil” and everything I got back was… one page is right. You put one page of your most impressive stuff there and if you get more to put on it that’s better or more recent, you take something else off.
Including something on a cover sheet that says “I’m not wasting your time” makes sense… but not if you waste their time doing it.
Makes sense to me.
My cover letter for years was “Enclosed is my story X, the manuscript is disposable. I’ve enclosed a SASE for your reply.”
When I sold I added “My latest sale was to Y” When I had three professional sales, I listed those and dropped the semi-pros completely. But I only listed THREE sales at any time.
I once gave a presentation to a Java users’ group when Java was fairly new as a programming language. We had a lot of folks who had learned Java but their day jobs were still writing in older programming languages. I noted that the dirty little secret of business is that nobody will hire you to do something that somebody else hasn’t already paid you to do, so writing a little application on your own would convince them. You have to convince your current employer that they need to have you do one of your current tasks with the skill you just learned. Which means you have to convince them you can, and then accomplish something that you’re not sure you can because your skill level isn’t up to it yet, but you have to believe it will become so by doing the task.
The thing about writing is that it’s a lifetime career. Most writers don’t retire, and their income late in their career comes from stuff they wrote decades before, if they don’t get tricked into selling their rights for a publishing equivalent of a Wimpy burger. (I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.) You have to plan it for the long run, not the short term gain. When I changed careers from day laborer to programmer, I had to take a pay cut for a year and a half while paying for school, but I never would have been where I am today if I hadn’t.
So basically, thanks for the advice. I hope folks take it.
Well, it’s like I let my other houses but Baen go, I’m trying to replace that income with indie (it’s … not close, but)
You have to sacrifice something to get something. As is, I feel like I’m being squeezed on all sides.
You never know, traditional publishers might figure it out enough that it makes sense to go back someday.
Someday. Not now.
Hang in there. My wife’s sales haven’t been much, but it beats years of spending money on abuse and excuses by publishers. Most versions were, “It’s wonderful, but I can’t sell anything this long by a new writer, and you can’t cut it or break it up.” Of course some were rude or even insultingly stupid. It’s hard for an established writer to make the transition given the immediate loss of income, but I think you’re doing the right thing for the long run.
Well, I’m okay for income given non fic gig and Baen ramping up the “now more books, please.” It’s the time that’s killing me. I THINK I could do everything if I stopped sleeping. Since I’m dragging this con-crud thing, the boys very forcefully told me they’re stepping up on the house… and that’s what they’re doing. But it’s not enough.
“It’s wonderful, but…”
Those were always the worst rejections for me. Hear that or some variation of it enough times, and you catch yourself wishing they’d just say the book was crap instead. Because at least then you could tell yourself there was something you could fix in the writing, something you could do about it.
My own sales may not be all I’d wish right now, either, but I’m probably happier as a writer than I’ve been in years. That makes up for a lot these days, at least for me — or maybe it just means I’m getting old!
My goals? (1) Get these *&^%$ voices out of my head (not working, more just crowd in!) and (2) Have income not dependent on the Oil and Gas industry, because it’s notorious for bust and boom cycles. Income not dependent on any corporation at all is nice, too. Now I just need a whole lot more . . .
Whirlpool? I’m running in circles wondering what to do next.
Well, it feels like a whirlpool, but it’s not, I don’t think, quite what you mean.
My career-stagnation type whirlpool is failure to branch out to other venues. I’m still mostly stuck on Amazon. I swear, I’ll find the time to learn the others/remember to get out of Amazon Select, so I can move those . . . good grief 13 titles, with as many as five more possible by Xmas!
LOL. I have same problem on remembering to go off Amazon select. LOL
Bwahahaha! Just unchecked them all.
Of course the first in the series isn’t off until Sept 5 . . . No matter. I have too much to do until then already.
But come September, it’ll be a total KOBO blitz!
My whirlpool is the one that booms up from unimaginable, watery depths, declaiming, “Yoouuuu suuuuuccckkk …”
My goal? To produce one professional book per year. Not sure yet how to sail around the whirlpool.
Ignore the whirlpool. Or at least lend me a hand with the paddle. I know it doesn’t sound like that, but I’m there too and have always been.
Paddles *and* earplugs. There should be enough to go around, right?
Kali, when I was flying full time I wrote doggerel on the side. Rhyming verse, of all things. People liked it, wanted more of it, and some of it ended up in an international aviation magazine and was used to name a plane. A US Navy squadron used another piece (with my permission) in their history publication. I think my poetry sucks, but other people hung it on their walls and put it in their magazines. Go for it, and paddle faster. 🙂
Thanks, Red, I always wanted to write poetry, but that Muse fled from me on a Harley, clutching the back of a guy dressed like Tuxedo Mask.
It’s painful to run the numbers some times. With one stellar exception, non-fiction books cost me a large sum to write and publish, even though they come from pretty major presses. Fiction is starting to bring in a trickle of income. But I put all my sweat and tears into the non-fic, and was told that with all the non-fic I’ve written, jobs would be easy to come by (hah!), and non-fic is what I’m judged by (see the jobs part). Research for non-fic demands time and resources I’m starting not to have. As you say, it is a whirlpool. But if it is a slowdown or a drowning I’m not completely sure yet.
Never a drowning. Here’s my hand — or a rope if you need it. Charlie and I are doing a post at PJM promoting Indie, and anything else I can do to help, let me know.
Meanwhile, write more fic.
It might be time for everyone to link their stories or cover art again.
Misha,TXRed and others — Sarah’s advice to keep at it is worth it’s weight in gold. I’ve writing for two decades and posting online for a decade, so I had a lot of material for going Indie. Until I published my sixth book on Amazon my sales for everything was barely into triple digit dollars. For my sixth book, I gave away free copies for a day, and my *sales* for the month more than doubled. For my seventh book, I gave some away as well, and then Lo! Amazon picked it for one of their daily Kindle deals and sales went up into the low 4 digits. Sales have steadily declined but I have another book almost ready. Yes, Amazon seems like the Army in Heinlein’s “Glory Road” a mixture of “Dirty Tricks Department” and “Fairy Godmother: departments, but such things are possible. Persevere, Persevere, Persevere!
Yep, I’m told that sixth book and 14th are “break points.” I have short stories up, but that’s different.