Managing Myself

Whenever I find myself filling any kind of survey on “what field of work you’re in” I have trouble finding what fits. Ultimately, I default to “entertainment.”

I know as I fill it in that it’s not what they think it is. But I also know it’s true. Sure, I’m not up on stage, singing and dancing and clip clopping on high heels. And I don’t tell stories on the stage.

But I do tell stories. And I’m aware what people have to be entertained by those stories, or they won’t give me any money.

Now, for most of my life, I have been writing whatever was accepted. I’m now, for the first time in 35 years back to my first world, created in 1976. Now, it’s not that I didn’t want to write it before — though I don’t think I could write it before. I mean, I had the entire world, and had worked it out to the nth degree. I have a genealogy of the rulers going back two thousand years, I know what industries are thriving and from what. I know a hundred side characters. My last attempts at it were lost in knowing too much about the country, and having no clue how to bridge it for the new reader. But that wasn’t the whole thing. The more important thing was that no one would buy the world. And not all of it was because of how it was written but because of what the world is.

I’m still not absolutely sure there’s a market for it, but I’m writing it to the best of my understanding, and it will either sink or swim. It is what it is.

However, writing it and releasing it has to fit in a schedule. It is part of the Schrodinger universe, (So is Rhodes, btw) but I don’t want the universe to be known for it, because I have a dozen other (finite) series set in it. Like Winter Prince — 4 books — or well, Rhodes — 20 but they’re short books — or the Valhalla trilogy — 3 books. Or–

So, everything working out, it will be released towards the end of the year. As a 6 book series. (Almost for sure. Unless one in the middle flakes on me.)

But in the mean time I need to feed other series: Dyce. Darkships. Shifters…

Because I have fans who love those.

It’s a balance, walking the tight rope between what I desire to write — it is important to write what I need to, or the writing shuts down hard. I’ve seen it in some stuff I wrote at the end of 2019 — and what sells.

Because in the end I’m an entertainer. I can sing and dance to an empty auditorium, but it won’t feel right. This is part of the reason I joke I should have written for the drawer then brought it out indie when it was possible. But the truth is that I’d never have been able to just write for the drawer for year after year. I tell stories. I need someone to hear them. And the sign they hear and appreciate it is the tinkling of coins in the storyteller’s bowl.

However, it didn’t occur to me till today, when I was discussing the schedule and the balance to a friend that I’m going to need to manage something very thoroughly and carefully: my assets.

Stop giggling. I don’t mean that. It’s not that kind of entertainment.

What are a writers’ assets? Well, a writer in my position with series started, somewhat of a reputation, some fans?

Like any other business, my business has monetary assets.

I’ve never had those before. The money I made from writing, which wasn’t a ton, went normal living expenses, form my own, to looking after/helping the kids, to stuff we needed like house or car repairs. (We had two houses in a row that smelled when I had just got an advance, and throw a problem of the exact size of the money that had come in. From the enclosure of a shower collapsing, to a porch that needed rebuilding, to re-roofing, to–) Had I had the money say 20 years ago, to promote my work, I could have made something go big: there were things you could do, from tours to attending a lot of cons. But I didn’t.

I have some money now, because I ran a blog fundraiser with the intent of using the money to help me write more and promote my work. I’ve got some help, and I’m moving into figuring out how to promote (which is different for indie, of course.)

That’s one asset. I do need to figure out how to promote, because I don’t want to use the money wantonly or waste it.

But there are other assets. My blog, of course, and my work at instapundit. I need to keep both of those up, which is a time investment.

Then there’s my fans. while it’s very cute to say “Author name is not your bitch” and it’s even true to an extent, your fans are an asset. They won’t walk away en masse, but you can offend them and drive them nuts. And you can alienate if not all of them a majority of them.

In my case, I have fans for various series, more than my fans, which is odd. But it means that as I promote and resume series, I need to keep an eye out for how large that asset is, and how active.

Why?

Well, because my biggest asset — other than my craft and the years of learning — is my time. I have a limited quantity of time. Not just the unknowable amount of time I have left in life, but the time I can give it every day or every week. It can’t be every minute I’m awake, and there’s no point trying to make it so.

I have a marriage I can’t entirely neglect. Nor do I want to. I have children, now grown and on their own, with whom I need to spend some time. And want to.

More importantly, I have hobbies that aren’t writing — and which have been grossly neglected — from sewing to gardening, to reading, to spending time petting my cats. All of it feeds into the writing too.

Used to be that writers had someone else in charge of deciding when your novel series were done. “I’m sorry, your books aren’t selling. Do you want to start a different series?” (Okay, usually I was told I had to do a different series and what the genre and name I’d use, but never mind.”

No, I’ll need to manage my time as an asset. In the absence of a series selling extraordinarily well (So far Darkship Thieves is about it) or my feeling a driving need to continue writing it, I will phase it out, fast or slowly.

For instance, Shifters will get a couple more books, and some promo, but absent a pick up in sales, it will probably become a once a year thing for the fans.

I’d like to do one more of the Musketeer Mysteries, as much as it’s going to eat my time, because the last one is half a book. BUT barring it selling like gangbusters, it’s not going to continue after that.

The Shakespeare series, at this point, I’d only consider “finishing” (It was originally planned at 5 books) with a kickstarter and serious money on the line.

Meanwhile I have a lot of other series I want to write that have been waiting (admittedly less than 46 years) which I’ll have to put to the same test. We’ll see how it does, and if it doesn’t, it gets de-emphasized or stopped.

Because my time is an asset and I have to learn to manage it.

Honestly, it’s not easy. My boss is a b*tch, and my employee is a pain.

But it is a business, as well as anything else.

I’m in the entertaiment business. And I have to use my assets and learn to tap dance.