by Sarah Hoyt

I’d travel earlier this morning and write this post.

(Did anyone else wonder, hearing “If I had a hammer” what peculiarly deprived land the singer came from?  I mean, even in my childhood when things like scissors could be considered “expensive” hammers were all over the place.  Heck, hammers were probably the first weapon of mankind, and even I can make one from a rock, a stick and some rope.)

On the serious side…  I was asked recently, either here or elsewhere, what would I do if I could go back and tell my struggling beginner self that I would one day be published.

Twenty years ago, when I was pushing the baby carriage all over downtown Colorado Springs, because it was the only way to make Robert sleep so I could have two hours to write, what would I have done if I’d come from the future to tell me “You’ll be published.  Many times.  Everything will be all right.” what would have happened?

Well, beyond the fact that I’d have known I’d gotten old of some really funny veggies at the farmers market?  I mean, supposing there was a way to travel back, or to have me see myself, or to send a note – would I do it?

For years and years, even five years ago, the answer would have been “oh, yes.”  Knowing for sure I was going to be published one day would change things for the better.  Gone would be the long, long silences of doubt, the times I spent chipping at block as though it were a big stone wall, and writing as though I were passing words out through a small hole in it.  Because I would know I wasn’t writing in vain, right?  I’d know I’d make it.

Let’s leave aside the effect this might have had on my fledgling talent.  I know for at least four years I worked backwards, working away from publishable and towards “literary” not because I wanted to, but because I thought it was the best way to break in.  (At that it might have been, just not for me.)  And I know that for three years my entire writers group worked away from “publishable” because the one published writer who’d joined thought there was ONLY one way to write a book “action adventure” and despised romance even as a plot element.  She dispensed her opinions not as opinions but as holy writ and we of course followed, even though she’d published ONE book, ten years before.  We didn’t know any better.

A little bit of self-confidence might have helped there.  Almost certainly would have helped there.  And I might have developed a voice and the confidence to have a voice earlier.

But the truth is, if I had a chance to go back, if I had the ability to speak to my younger self, I couldn’t really tell her “Everything will turn out all right.”  To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, you don’t want to lie.  Not to the young.

Would I tell her about the books written that never saw the shelves of a bookstore – let alone in sufficient numbers to find an audience?  Would I tell her about the years when I had to write six books a year because somehow the houses who were doing me a favor by publishing my trash wanted to do me a favor many times a year?  (Because that makes so much economic sense.)  Would I tell her about the contracts that I signed while knowing they’d put my own books out of my hands for my lifetime and maybe even my kids?  Would I tell her about the contracts I signed thinking they were perfectly safe which aren’t now, because things have changed so fast?  Would I tell her about the houses holding on to books that BY CONTRACT and LAW have reverted, where it would be too expensive to litigate and they know I don’t have the money because they never paid that much?  Would I tell her about being considered seminal by younger writers and bumping into fans every other place I go, while at the same time seeing numbers on my statements that mean I should be known to my close family and only on a good day?

Back then, when I was trying to break in, would I even have believed any of that?  I’d have told myself that business was past all that.  We weren’t anymore in the days when some company paid pennies to the maker of Monopoly then went on to make billions off his invention.  We had a conscience now, even businesses – particularly those businesses that dealt with intellectual property.  People know it’s wrong to take people’s unique work and pay them a pittance.  People wouldn’t buy Manhattan from some tribe for beads and trinkets.  Business has by and large got more moral, if nothing else because public opinion could be bad for them.

No, I probably wouldn’t risk being told that stuff.  I mean, people can die from laughing too much.  Particularly when it’s not a happy laughter.  Also, I don’t think I could have explained to my young self that while that might be true of companies that make gadgets and hammers (ah!) It’s not true of what we’ll call the “saintly industries” where people are forming people’s opinion for people’s own good.  After all, they’re doing everyone a favor by influencing what sells, and by using you – yes, you – to promote people more worthy of being seen by the public.

Also, they controlled the press for so long, and were used to being described in glowing terms, that they still don’t get that public opinion can turn on them.  And their captive writers are fostering their illusion, and making sure they land real hard.  (Sometimes I wonder if that’s on purpose.)

So… what would I say?

I guess I would say “Yes, you’ll get published, but don’t sweat the low times, and be careful.  In the future, oh, seventeen, eighteen years in the future, there will be this time when you can put up your own stuff.  So, pick and choose what you let the traditional houses get, and don’t sign stupid contracts.

It might be worth it to you, for a while at least, to let the traditionals have a few books.  Whether your statements reflect that or not, and even taking in account you only get a few pennies per book sold – even if all is reported perfectly correctly and above board – you’re seeding an audience.  This will make your indie efforts start up faster and bigger.

But round about 2010 start disengaging from the traditional industry.  The Titanic is going down, and the lifeboats are going to be a scramble for survival until eventually you reach other ships that might make it to shore.  Just step off into the grand piano. It will float and let you bide your time till things shake out and you know where to go.

Or to drop that over extended metaphor: at about 2010 start working on the side to launch your own indie career, so you can stop writing six books a year, and start making money.”

How much difference would that have made?  Well… I might not have signed some of the dumber contracts.  But in at least three of those cases, I also wouldn’t then have written those books, which HAVE got me some fans.  The books might be captive in enemy hands, but I wouldn’t wish them unwritten, anymore than a mother whose kids fail wishes them unborn.

I might – would in fact – have kept aside some of the books I did write that I more or less gave away.  I might – would in fact – have written a few books I really wanted to write that my agents refused to send out or told me there was no market for.  I might – would in fact – have reached this point with a stash of ten or so books in the drawer and ready to go up.

And I might have written fewer short stories, which, in the long run, weren’t as useful to my particular career as I thought they should be.

But the shorts were useful as learning tools, and other than the fact that it’s a pain to put up that many short pieces, they’re little more-or-less-continuous cash cows and once I get them all up, they’ll make me the equivalent of a novel sale a year, or a little more.

And a year and ten books?  That would be the difference, otherwise?  Ah, come on.  Would it be worth going back in time for a year advantage?  And then books?  – shrug – I could do that in less than two years.

So… if I had a time machine?  I’d tell myself what I tell beginner writers (because with the indie stuff I am in a way beginning all over again):

Don’t give away your inheritance for a mess of pottage.  Traditional publishing in the end costs more than it’s worth – unless you find the one or two houses who will deal fairly with you.  And even then, be aware you’re tying yourself long term to getting a tiny percentage of your book’s sales.  (Not saying it’s not worth it for reaching a larger audience.  I do it.  BUT it’s not by default something you should do.)

Don’t not write something because no traditional house will take it or your agent refuses to send it out (It might be a good idea to work without an agent if you can, btw.  I know some houses won’t, and you might not be ready to drop them, but the net gain FOR YOU of an agent is a round zero.)  Write it and (eventually) put it out yourself.

Write for the public.  Forget all those how to write blockbusters books.  Those are written for how to impress the publishers, who in turn are trying to impress the distributors.  Go back before the publishing industry discovered how to pleasure itself and bent into a circle.  Read the older bestsellers and figure out how to make people who read – not the same as people who publish or distribute – happy.  Cultivate THOSE techniques.

Can you make a living from indie?  Well, I can’t tell you for sure “yes” yet, but from what I’ve seen there’s a better chance it will than that traditional ever would.

And you are free to create what you want – a freedom you only appreciate when you’ve been deprived of it from so long.

That’s about it.  If I had a time machine, it might cut two years off my attempt to go indie and make a living…  Helpful, but hardly worth it.

So, I’ll start today trying to make up that little gap.  And whistle while I work.

(Though before the portal closed, I WOULD have yelled at my past self “Homeschool those kids.  Trust me.” … but that’s a different matter.)

Unrelated: I’m almost over the killer flu, only I feel like I need to sleep rather a lot.  But it’s sleep on the way to recovery, not the ‘I’m too exhausted because I stood up sleep.”  And maybe it’s not as unrelated as that.  Perhaps that applies to my career too.  In either case, right now, I’m going back to bed for a few hours.  The future will wait that long.