Three Pitfalls to Avoid in Your Writing Career (Patreon)

So, you’ve sold a couple of short stories, or maybe you’ve written and trunked two novels. You’re trying to build your career but you’re getting tired of the grind.

I hear you and I have 100% been there. Something I try to talk about when I can is that period in a writer’s career where they’re certain that they’re putting in the work and they’re getting good feedback about their writing…but their career just isn’t taking off.

This was me in 2010 and 2011. I had two stories published and I’d written three novels, queried one of them, and yet, I didn’t feel like I was actually *getting anywhere*. My Campbell Award clock had started with the publication of “Kachikachi Yama” and I didn’t have anything else sold to build on that.

But the Campbell isn’t the only way to launch a career. Far from it. And I had made my life harder by falling into a trap that I want to help other writers avoid. 

One - Querying a Novel Without Working on the Next One

I was nearly two years into querying agents with my novel Shield and Crocus, on my way to collecting about a hundred rejections from agents and editors. But for most of that time, I wasn’t writing another novel. Instead, I been channeling all my time and attention into querying and revising and querying some more – with just that same novel.

What I should have done is write another novel while I was querying. Then, when I got rejections, I should have only revisited the novel with the most specific, actionable changes. And before long, I should have stopped fiddling with it and moved on.
I learned a lot about revision working on Shield and Crocus, but the biggest lesson I learned was a career lesson, not a revising one – Always Move Forward.

Because my next novel, Geekomancy, was the one that sold and launched my career as a novelist. I learned and grew as a writer working on Shield and Crocus and then put those skills on display in Geekomancy.

There’s a good chance that whatever the first novel that you query is, it might not be the novel that sells. It’s just the truth. I was the truth for me and for countless other writers. Some writers break out with their first novel, but there’s no reason to *expect* that result.

This advice works for self-publishing as well, if taken at the level of Always Move Forward.

You self-published your first novel and it hasn’t found an audience? If that’s the case, then maybe the thing to do is to write a new book one rather than trying to write the sequel to that first novel and hope that the audience will come once the series is complete. It’s impossible to be sure what level of sales books that haven’t been written or published yet will find, but sometimes the thing you get from writing or publishing a novel is the experience that will let you do better on the next one.
Always Move Forward.

Two - Focusing on Platform at the Expense of Writing

Another problem I see crop up for writers in that frustrating period at the start of their career is trying to build their platform at the expense of working on the writing.

I get where this comes from – a debut novel from an author with an existing fan-base or platform is easier to market. But it’s not a guarantee of success. Building a platform large enough to really tip the scales is a massive endeavor that usually takes years or decades. I’ve had authors ask me whether they *need* a platform in order to be able to get a book deal.

The answer is no. The thing you *need* is for the book to be good. (The level of famous someone has to be for the work to not need to be good and still get a deal is so stratospheric that I don’t think it’s useful to talk about much.)

Having a platform is great! Going to a publisher with a great novel and proof of an engaged platform (large or small or in-between) can help your chances in some cases, but the novel really is the important thing. When I was working at Angry Robot, we always focused more on the work than on a writer’s platform, and that meant turning down some novels written by Actually Really Famous people. In the non-fiction world, having a platform seems to be much more important, but for fiction? You can be an unknown that comes out of nowhere with an amazing novel and your publisher can take that stunning work and get you the audience.

And you definitely *can* build a platform while developing your writing. Depending on how you work, you might be able to keep a steady pace writing and/or revising while reviewing books on a blog, attending conventions, hosting a podcast, or whatever.

But it’s good to check in with yourself from time to time and make sure you’re allocating your energy in the most productive fashion. I’m always going to recommend that an author focus on getting the next book ready rather than building their platform.
Especially if you haven’t gotten your first book deal, your first big short story sale, self-published your first book, and so on.

Three - Not Being Intentional About the Career You Want

There are more ways than ever to have a career as a writer. You can traditionally publish and focus on novels sold via bookstores. You can self-publish exclusively on Amazon or across a bunch of online booksellers. You can have a hybrid career, self-publishing some books and traditionally publishing others. You can sell directly to your readers via regular Kickstarter campaigns. You can publish work on Wattpad for free to a gigantic readership.

These are all valid writing careers, each with their ups and downs. 

What’s important, to me, is whether you’re pursuing the career you really want. If you want a career as a traditionally-published novelist and you find yourself putting off your novel because you keep starting new short stories and want to finish them so they can go on submission, maybe you want to check in with yourself and realize that what you want is a career in short and long fiction, and that you should celebrate your successes in submitting stories rather than beating yourself up because you haven’t gotten your novel done as fast as you wanted.

This isn’t just about how you spend your time, it’s also about what you’re writing and how. If what you want is to be read by the largest number of people, then it makes sense to include some self-publishing in your career plans, on Wattpad and/or Amazon – that’s where huge swaths of readers are right now, and it’s easier to reach them through those channels, and on your own terms. If what you want is literary acclaim, then you probably want to focus on traditional publishing. 

And if you want that acclaim but find yourself coming back again and again to writing action-adventure novels, it’s time to reflect on what you want to do about that mis-match. A core genre adventure novel is not likely to get picked up by imprints like Knopf, Riverhead, Crown, or one of those other mega-houses that has the widest reach in the traditional market. Those houses tend to pick up more books like Station Eleven or Annihilation – genre books with a strong literary appeal. (N.B. this is specifically for adult SF/F, and other categories/genres work differently, though many don’t. In YA you get breakouts with high concepts ripped from the headlines like The Hate You Give but also involved fantasy works like Children of Blood and Bone.)

If your work and your intentions aren’t aligned, it might mean changing what you write, or it might mean changing your goals. But if you keep plugging ahead with your writing when what you’re writing and your goals aren’t aligned, it can be very discouraging.

I’m very reticent to tell people to write different genres, categories, or tones, but if they’re telling me they want a certain type of career but they’re not writing in ways that will help them achieve those goals? Reflecting on that mis-alignment might be useful. Even if your conclusion is “No, these aren’t mis-aligned, and here’s how I am going to make it work.”

Publishing is weird, so there are always exceptions. The Martian is a nerdy as hell, detail-obsessed hard science novel, but it’s also incredibly funny and has an unforgettable voice. Those latter elements gave the book incredibly broad appeal. 

The big question here is – does your book have that angle that gives it the appeal you want it to so it can help you achieve the kind of career you want? And if not, what aspects of your writing will most help you build that career? Your skill in worldbuilding might help transport readers and provide solace, or your sense of humor might be infectious, giving your books amazing word-of-mouth appeal. Or maybe your use of imagery and description reaches lofty literary heights that will get you prime placement in indie bookstores to reach readers that want only the most exquisite prose.

This kind of self-reflection sometimes means adjusting your goals. And sometimes life makes certain kinds of goals less attainable. You have to take care of a sick family member or something in your own health changes what is as feasible.
Or maybe what you want changes.

If you realize that being a part of a community is more important to you than your own career as a creator, that is fine. Do what makes you happy. But be sure that you’re being deliberate about it rather than falling into it because it’s what easy or because you’ve been faced with setbacks.

cus Determines Your Reality

All three of these pitfalls come down to focus, intention, and priority. One of the best ways to be miserable as a writer is to forge blithely ahead doing what you’ve always been doing without being self-aware and ensuring that you’re growing and learning as a writer and that you’re being honest with yourself about where you’re putting your time and what you want out of your writing.

If you set yourself up with goals where you can find joy every step of the way, where even trying and failing gives satisfaction, whether it’s pride in the effort, building a community of other creatives, or joy in the writing itself, you’re going to be in a better position to keep writing, keep improving, and ultimately, to have the kind of career you really want.