Like a Phoenix

Despite being of a personality type that frequently flies too close to the sun, pushes my limits, and therefore threatens burnout on a regular basis, it's not often that I actually crash and burn.

Last week, I crashed. I crashed hard.

I’ve been switching email service providers this month. After working through the weekend (again) to get MailerLite set up—something I was convinced I didn't have time to do in my regular work week—and suppressing escalating panic about an unrealistic manuscript deadline that I had set for myself, I found myself fighting tears on a near-hourly basis and knew something about my system was broken.

I hadn't taken a real break at Christmas, as I had been staring down this impending deadline since the beginning of December, when I was sure I could learn to dictate successfully and write a 200,000-word novel in a month—because other people could dictate ten to fifteen thousand words a day, so why couldn't I?

That question “other people do this, so why can't I?” has defined my attitude for much of my life. While this has often been a good thing, causing me to tackle new passions and interests without fear, it is also the reason I have so often fought (or experienced) burnout. Because it fails to recognize my limitations.

Let's talk about limitations for a second.

Limitations get a bad rap. Every inspirational poster out there tells you that limitations only exist in your mind, and even very real physical limitations can often be overcome.

Which is often absolutely true. I mean, we all love a good underdog story, don't we? I love watching Sean Astin as Rudy overcome his small size to become an American football legend.

Yes, even this unsporty girl still loves sports movies, because nearly all of them have this inspirational theme. Who doesn't love to see the underdog “make it?”

In fact, many great stories are about the hero overcoming a limitation in the form of a Lie they believe. As an eternal optimist, I want to believe that everyone has the potential to overcome their own lies if they choose to. That is how I write my characters.

Last week, I had to overcome one of my own lies. And the lie was this: I must write and publish books quickly because that's the only way I can be a full-time writer and make a living doing it, which is what I want to do.

But why on earth would you think that? I hear you asking.

Please indulge me for a moment while I explain the current state of the publishing industry as briefly as possible for those who don't keep up on these things.

Is it getting harder to find the books you love? There’s a reason for that. Photo by Kenny Luo on Unsplash.

The Whys of the Modern Author Life in a Nutshell

Changing technology and the increasing power of Amazon in the industry has had both positive and negative consequences. For readers, it's been great—Amazon has continually offered products and services that make access to books easier and cheaper, first with eBooks and the Kindle, and about five years ago, by revealing their Kindle Unlimited subscription service, which lets you read as many books as you want for a reasonable flat monthly fee. For the two-books-a-day people, this was a boon from heaven. Yay, readers!

These new technologies have also had positives for authors, too. For the first time in history, anyone can publish a book with a few simple and easily accessible (for many people in the world) tools, and people around the world can have instant access to it. No more gatekeepers. The readers get to decide if your book is any good. Yay, authors!

The early adopters of eBooks had to suffer a lot for the cheapness and convenience, as many of those first offerings were, well, just not very good. Despite that, authors who began publishing at the beginning of the eBook revolution ten years ago could very quickly replace their day job, because their “not very good” title was one of the very few readers had to choose from. When supply is low and demand is high, quality isn’t a limiting factor on making an income.

But as more and more authors have flooded the market, competition has gotten stiffer, and many independently published books today are indistinguishable from their traditionally published cousins as far as quality is concerned. Many are even better. Indie authors have truly become indie publishers, investing not only care and love into their creations, but also the money required to polish them to a shine. Yay, readers and authors!

But there's a secret war going on behind the scenes. (Or a not-so-secret war.) The glut of good, independently published books is causing big publishers to consolidate, tighten their belts, and take even fewer risks than they used to. Often, they want an author to already have an established platform. And how does one do that? Publish independently. Get good at marketing. Connect with readers. Do all the things, most of which have nothing to do with the craft of writing. And by the time an author can do all that, they may or may not even want to run the risks associated with traditional publishing, depending on whether the publisher can actually offer them something they can’t do themselves.

In the meantime, programs like Kindle Unlimited require exclusivity (from participating authors) to that platform and pay half a cent per page read, not by the borrow, constricting an author’s ability to make a profit or establish a platform outside of Amazon. Even Amazon's basic site-wide algorithm rewards publishing on a 30-day schedule by boosting visibility for new books—which, since Amazon represents 80% of the publishing market and there are literally millions of books in the Kindle store, matters.

I’m a strong believer in publishing “wide”—meaning, on all the available platforms, not just Amazon—but Amazon gives authors strong incentive not to do so, which becomes a self-fulfilling cycle. And even “wide” authors depend heavily on Amazon sales most of the time. It exerts tremendous control over the industry, and some authors are one algorithm adjustment away from their most sustainable income source going down the toilet.

All this amounts to authors going to ever-more-desperate lengths to get their books in front of readers while watching their profits (if they ever had any) diminish.

This has resulted in an indie author model of rapid release, with those authors who are able writing books very quickly, sometimes as many as twelve or fourteen per year. (Sound impossible? I know several authors personally who do this, and I know of many more who do.)

In other words, books are becoming a commodity in a system that rewards those who can create them the fastest, not necessarily the best, while simultaneously creating smaller and smaller profit margins for the producers.

Fast books can be good books. They are definitely going to be different books than slow ones that are the result of an author’s noodling and thought experiments over a period of months or even years. But, fast or slow, if you have to give away that book for free and then pay for an ad for that free book in order to find readers, the math is going in the wrong direction.

Fast writers get around this by producing enough work they can charge for that they can give away some of it to entice readers to the paid work.

But what about slow writers who only put out a book a year or less?

For the authors who can manage to write quickly, the rapid release model works. These are the authors that make six figures a year by writing fiction. Most traditionally published authors can't even hope for that anymore unless their name is Steven King.

However, I wanted to write fiction full time. So when I heard that I could potentially make a very good living as a full-time fiction author using this rapid release model, I set my sites on making my career look like that.

Because if they can do it, so can I. Right?

Being an author often means trying to make your books stand out in a crowded market—where a new book is published every five minutes. Photo by Jaredd Craig on Unsplash.

How that Looks IRL

Now, as a fiction writer, I'm still pretty new. I haven't been scribbling stories on every available surface since I was a kid, and though I've read hundreds of books, I've only been studying fiction writing for about ten years. So I thought I'd start with putting out one book a year. Then two books a year. Then four. Then six. You know, work my way up to it.

Last year, four years after I published my first novella, I hit my first multi-title year, publishing one long book and one short one. Plus two short stories/novelettes. This year, I wanted to up that number, maybe even double it.

So I set myself this crazy deadline for The Sphinx’s Heart. I was going to learn to dictate and finish a novel in a month. How hard could it be? Another author had done it*, and if she could, so could I. I even booked a date with a developmental editor and put down a deposit. Set deadlines that scare you, the common knowledge said. Force yourself to commit.

Not that getting to my writing desk is a problem for me, but with money on the line, I knew I’d be as committed as I’d ever been. I don’t miss deadlines when other people are counting on me. I just don’t.

So I pushed myself. I skipped sleep. I skipped weekends and holidays. Fear became my constant companion, especially as my deadline crept closer and I wasn’t even halfway through the plot.

As the deadline approached and I knew I wouldn’t make it, my editor graciously let me push it out by another month. I can do it by then, for sure, I assured her. And myself.

But I began to dread getting in my chair in the morning. I was spending twenty hours a week on my novel, but all I was doing was cleaning up the mess I'd made dictating the early parts of the book—and being afraid. Being very afraid. (It turns out that “learning to dictate” was not quite so straight-forward as I’d thought it would be.)

Last week, I was ready to break. I started crying at the least provocation. Something’s wrong. I need to change something.

But I have a deadline! I caaan’t! I wailed to myself.

By chance, I'd recently heard author and writer coach Becca Syme interviewed on a podcast, and, practically on impulse (or rather, out of complete desperation), decided I needed to read her book, Writer, You Need to Quit. (Even though I was more than a little afraid that what I read would advise me to quit writing altogether.)

So I downloaded it. And I was relieved to not be among the group whom she said should maybe reconsider a career in writing.

However, I was even more relieved when she got to the part that she billed as one of the “hardest chapters to write”—because it gave me permission to be myself as a writer.

I’ve been spending so much time trying to learn how to write like other people write. But I never once took into consideration the things about me and them that were different—so different that for me to do what they do, especially to learn to do it in a short period of time, may be impossible. Things like the genre of books I write. Life circumstances. Skill. But above all, what I value about writing and the books I produce and the kind of lifestyle I want to have.

I had also never considered if, once I’d done that, I’d want the lifestyle I’d created for myself.

With the current state of the publishing industry, being an author can feel a lot like this. Photo courtesy of 123rf.com.

What My Limitations Are

If we truly want something, we will often be able to find a way around our limitations. There might be a price, but we can find the way.

We often forget that limitations are like boundaries that nature sets for us. Push them too far too fast, and not only do we risk unrecoverable injury, but we end up miserable.

It does no good to anyone to deny your limitations when you’ve been beating yourself bloody trying to overcome them and have made little to no progress. Despite what Eddie the Eagle went through to make it to the Olympics, he had very real limitations that he would not have been able to overcome if he’d wanted to win a medal.

But his goal was not to get a medal—it was just to compete at all. He wanted to be allowed to enter the field. And somehow, he found a way to do that—but it still cost him. If he’d have been determined to get that gold medal, he well may have killed himself in the process of trying.

Just like I’ve been killing myself to reach a goal that my inherent values limit me from achieving.

There were lots of great things I learned from reading Becca’s book, but the most important one is probably that the things I value in a book are not conducive to a fast writing process.

I write long, complicated, epic, political (kind of) stories about heavy subjects in worlds I either have to make up or research heavily. I value representing cultures, people, and locations accurately and putting out excellent, thought-provoking books.

I also value time spent with family more than work, supposedly, and here I was, working through my precious weekends instead of hanging out with my kids and husband. After we lost Levi, I swore I wouldn’t do that again.

So why was I doing it?

More truths hit me as other sources I encountered last week talked about the advancements in AI technology and how it pertains to authors. Soon, humans won’t be able to write books fast enough to out-write an AI who can do it in minutes and for pennies on the dollar. This crazy publishing paradigm that has been created will be a house of cards ready to explode (forgive my mixed metaphors) when fiction becomes as easily produced as a toothbrush or any other gadget off a Chinese assembly line.

Yes, there will always be a market for human-written books—as long as they are unique enough to be considered artisanal. Just like the Walmarts of the world have created a backlash culture that values slow fashion, buying local, and growing your own food, eventually there will be book consumers who would rather pay premium rates for a well-written authentically human-made book than pennies for dime-store AI pulp fiction.

So that means I could sacrifice my health and sanity to learn how to write at the speed of my fast writer friends just in time for all of our “fast” work to be made obsolete, for the system to collapse, and for the really valuable books to have been written by humans who put their heart and soul into the content, making them “special” in a way no machine could ever reproduce.

Sorry, Data, no offense. Though I’m pretty sure whomever actually played the notes we’re hearing was not an android. ;-)

But wait, there’s more…

In addition to these sobering thoughts, many of these rapid-release authors still work sixty hours or more a week (especially if they’re indie and do All the Things). What will they do when the books they’re writing could be written by a machine?

In light of all that, I had to ask myself a really important question:

What is it that I really want?

I think we too often forget to ask ourselves that. Or if we do, we give the wrong answer.

Not so long ago, I would have answered that with “be a full-time fiction writer.”

But when I look at the realities of what that would mean, that’s not what I actually want.

What I want is to create a sustainable income that I enjoy and which gives me the flexibility and freedom to schedule my own hours while feeding and nurturing my creativity and which lets me help others do the same.

And then I realized what’s probably obvious to you: I’M ALREADY DOING THAT.

I love teaching piano, editing, and freelance writing. I love talking to people and telling their stories. And I can already make a decent living doing that which still allows me plenty of time to write fiction while retaining my sanity and health—if I would just stop burning myself out to become someone I’m not.

I kicked off this year talking about how my goal is to develop healthier habits.

Well, Habit Number One is this:

Accept what is.

Accept that I’m a writer who values excellence in my books more than writing them quickly, so if it’s a choice between the two, I choose to write slow excellence, and that’s okay.

Accept that I will still find fulfillment as a writer even if my primary income is from other sources. I can write just because I want to do it and my readers will still love my books!

Accept that I can have a happy and fulfilling life with what I already do. I don’t have to try to do more.

After all, a happy and fulfilling life is what I see as success.

Sometimes, we need to fake it ‘til we make it. And sometimes, we need to examine if what we’re trying to achieve is what we truly want out of life. Photo courtesy of 123rf.com.

Beauty Will Rise

Those truths were hard to swallow, but they were truths I needed to acknowledge.

So, I crashed. I burned. And now, like a phoenix, I’m rising from those ashes a happier, healthier person.

Already, I’m seeing the fruit of writing relaxed—I’m finally moving forward in my story. No, I probably won’t be releasing The Sphinx’s Heart this summer. But I’ll just keep typing until I get to the finish line, trusting that the result will be worth the wait.

More than four years after my world burned, I’m still rising. And that’s kind of encouraging, actually.

How about you? Have you experienced a moment where you realized that what you said you wanted was not what you actually wanted? Where your values conflict with the lifestyle that goes with your supposed goal? Where you found where your true limits actually are?

Let me know. We can shake our heads at our foolish younger selves and raise a cup of hot chocolate to better days ahead.

And to finish out the mini playlist I’ve included in this post, here’s a song from my inspiration track for The Sphinx’s Heart that is especially apropos to today’s post.

It’s been on this playlist for over a year. Apparently, my subconscious was trying to tell me something.

There’s something so freeing about accepting what is. Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash.

*The author in question is the amazing Andrea Pearson, who learned to dictate a novel in a month to meet a deadline after she broke her finger and couldn’t type. Did I stop to ask myself how long her novel was? No. Not to mention where she was in her writing journey or even if she immediately started with the crazy-high hourly dictation rates she now achieves. These are things I should have asked myself, though. Or her.