We all sell our soul. A little. It is part of the conditions of living.

No?

Perhaps that’s unusually melodramatic, even coming from a fiction writer, but it’s not wrong. Or not entirely.

This is not to say I’m sympathizing with the no-work movement. Well, except to the extent very young, very stupid me understands them. To an extent.

There is in the very young the certainty we can earn our living doing whatever it is we really want to do. And by very young, I mean, when I was so young that my idea of what I did when I grew up was drive a bus between worlds. (I used to play this with my little red tricycle. And visiting parts of grandma’s backyard.)

I can’t help but sympathize, because even you love your work, you always end up doing things you don’t want to do.

By the time I was about six, I had decided what I wanted to do was write for a living. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever. I enjoyed the process of thinking out things, putting them on paper and sharing them.

Which is great, of course. And also terrible, because that’s not what writing is as a job. Or it’s not all it is. There are days when that’s the very least of the work.

Particularly when I was working traditional, there were months of writing proposals, then trying to sell them. Making decisions on when to let a proposal go. Whether to write something on spec. And, my least favorite, judging the mood of the field and a particular editor or other.

And that’s where the danger is.

We all sell bits of our soul. In a way. Or we subdue what we want to do in favor of what-we-sorta-wanna-do or can do that pays for three meals a day and a roof over our heads (terrible habit.) But that’s… part of shaping us to live in the world. Unlike the fantasies of the infant, the world is not there all for our pleasure and amusement, and no one jumps when we say boo. Oh, maybe our parents, for some of us. But not for the rest of your life, or at least I hope not.

So those little bits that get trimmed off the edges are us conforming ourselves to the world and the world to us. It’s called growing up.

The other night, talking about this very same topic, I told my assistant and some friends that I wished I’d never gone trad. That I had the option, from the beginning, of going indie. Of writing as the spirit moved me. But they pointed out — and I know — that if that were the case there was a strong chance I’d never have learned what I needed to know: how to write many different things; how to write when I was dragging or half dead, or it was the last thing I wanted to do.

Maybe I’d have been happier, but there’s a good chance, too, I’d never have finished much of anything, and that what I had finished would be tainted by what I learned in school more than it needed to be. Probably insufferably literary and twee. Which is not what brings me joy, but I might have thought it was what I had to do.

So, just another form of selling my soul, and one that wouldn’t bring me three squares and a roof, either.

Most of the selling your soul, as you learn a profession, and learn to work, and try to advance in it is just adapting to the world. Making your soul conform to reality.

But everything is broken right now. For various reasons, the professions and arts are all broken to some degree or another. And when I came into writing, it was so broken that it was no longer channeling the best performers (and no longer had any clue to) because it had forgotten its main duty, of selling to the public. Instead, it was trying to be didactic and serve the purposes of whatever the last batch of crazy was coming out of the colleges (and yes, it changes every couple of years.)

It was akin to trying to write and push books out, but the space you can get something through is the size that will allow out a fortune from a fortune cookie. And it scans it to make sure it has the right key words for right now.

I’m not going to say I resented — yes, I did, but it’s not that bad — being someone who was star-struck (ah) with space opera at an early age, but was pushed to write fantasy, partly due to being born female, partly due to the certainty in the establishment (for profoundly asinine and drinking their own ink reasons) that only fantasy sold. I didn’t like it, particularly, and I always think my fantasy tends to be somehow manque (Not saying it’s bad, just you know, it’s not the navy “All that it can be”) but I can think in fantasy as well as in science fiction. The two are often adjacent, and easy to disguise one for the other.

However, over time, something happened. Strangely, after I sold, not before.

You see, when I broke in, the average career was three books long, though that shortened to 2 books shortly thereafter.

The chances were heavily stacked against having A career. And my career died… 4 times? Each time I came back making double what I’d made before (Well, I started at almost nothing!) but the experience was terrifying, and I cast about for ways to get back in, and scrabbled madly.

And each time was worse. If I’d let my career die the first time, I had worked at breaking in for 13 years, but I also still had a day job at the time. And I could have continued teaching in college, and just used “three” (Terminally literary) “books” as a bragging point. By the time it died again, it had been 8 years, and I hadn’t worked in 8 years. My resume was a shambles. Finding something outside writing was going to be…. tough.

The last time I looked into it, five years ago, it would have been easier to “retire” and maybe start a little craft business, because I have no resume; I no longer remember any of my languages; frankly, I’m an unemployed bum who has vivid dreams. Well, as far as a conventional resume is concerned.

But it wasn’t until I was talking to someone from Baen, that I realized why I actually wouldn’t ever go back to trad pub. Unless, somehow, it becomes impossible for me to sell indie at all. And even then, I might give stories away on some blog, and have a little craft business. If it should come to that.

No, Baen is not relevant here, except for being traditional, which made me think about the whole traditional experience. (Which is why who I was talking to also doesn’t matter. It wasn’t a professional conversation, either, just a social one.) Again, of the trad, and if I absolutely had to or starve, Baen is the only house I’d even consider. But — dear Lord — I don’t want it to come to that.

You see, I was selling my soul. No, I don’t think the house realized it. Heck, I didn’t realize it.

Look, I don’t mind writing to spec. In fact, I still do it when people invite me to an antho, and the theme interests me. I don’t mind writing in other people’s worlds, either, provided it’s a world I’ve enjoyed. It’s kind of like playing with another kids’ toys.

No. What I realized is that selling had gotten into my creative loop. I’d started hiding ideas from myself because I thought they’d never sell. (Probably not right either.)

Somewhere, where daydreams come from, from which ideas and then stories come, I’d started having a little voice that said “But x wouldn’t like that.” In the last few years, x was Baen, of course, since I blacklisted myself politically.

I did realize the political danger, before that. As I got pushed to writing things further and further out in the axis of “I can’t believe/approve of this” I came out of the political closet with an explosive bang, and thereby saved myself from unforgivable self-betrayal.

The thing with Baen was not nearly that bad. I was never asked to write what I didn’t believe. Or even not to write what they didn’t believe. The field’s “right wing” (Giggle) house is a broad church. It gives you leeway in matters of conscience.

It’s more something insidious, that they couldn’t have stopped and I couldn’t have avoided. I didn’t even know it was happening. And being stuck only one house… well, it made the effect stronger.

I really wanted to sell to them. Needed to sell to them, really, because I couldn’t sell to anyone else. So, like a kid who needs to get attention, I started tailoring my actions to it.

Paying attention to what was selling, to what others were writing. Thinking of how to do plot points in a way that would appeal to the fans.

To make things simple, the whole “I’m writing this to sell to a specific house/I have to sell this” got inside my OODA loop.

M. C. A. Hogarth, on Twitter, said that art shouldn’t be done “just” for money. I raised an eyebrow, because, well, see above. Without the need to conform my craft to the world, at the beginning, I might never have finished anything. I certainly wouldn’t have learned anything even vaguely uncomfortable.

But she’s not wholly wrong.

Your art shouldn’t be done only for money and forever. You shouldn’t only write what will give you three squares and a roof only your head. Those are important, sure. And writing such things feeds you. But at the same time, in a way it starves you.

For a time now, I’ve suspected that writing was “eating” me. I’d write a series, and end up so…. howlingly empty, feeling like I was in a wasteland, and couldn’t conjure up even a short story to save my life.

Eventually I’d recover, but every time I thought I wouldn’t. I thought it was writing too fast; writing too many different things; the sheer heartbreak of doing my best and finding that the houses didn’t care for it, and let it drop with a thud. Etc. etc. etc.

It felt mind-destroying. Soul destroying.

But it wasn’t till that conversation a couple of months ago, that I realized why. It’s because something was in my OODA loop, killing day dreams before they had a chance to take wing. It’s because the stuff I was putting out was mine but …. not really. It was shaped, fixed, neutered. It was closer to what someone else could have written than purely mine.

And while a little trimming is okay, of course (and mind you, I never thought words were sacred) there is a point you’re shutting down your own process and trying to do…. someone else’s. (Which explains why so many of my mentors thought my problem was too many workshops and reading too many how to books, when in fact I quit those 15 years ago at least.)

Now there were other things there, including physical stuff. But I realized in that conversation that part of the problem was I’d chained my muse to the wall and never let it see out the window. I fed her on carefully measured food that was supposed to be what everyone feeds their muse. And I never let her have any fun, or joy.

I’ve unchained her now. I think she’s gone a little nuts. I wake up in the middle of the night with the solution for a plot I outlined 30 years ago and never wrote past three chapters, and realize it will work, all of a sudden. And I’m writing some crazy stuff in my very first world.

I’m also continuing series, yes.

This freedom thing takes practice and time. I’m still not used to it.

But my mind is no longer an arid wasteland.

And my soul? I think it’s recovering.

It will take time, but I have hope it will happen.

I still have a very bad 4 meals and a roof habit. And if absolutely needed — particularly if needed for Dan — yeah, I’ll take up the burden. For a time at least. But hopefully not for long.

Because when you sell your soul and never feed it, art dies. And craft is not capable of carrying you forever.

I have a vague idea at the end of that road is death. Either physical or worse.

And I hope I’m not required to willingly walk into it again.