The unbearable lightness of ego
I thought a lot about whether to make this post. I finally decided to explain myself a bit, in the spirit of offering my experiences in a burgeoning career as I have been doing here for a while.
There's this thing I think about sometimes when I'm reading slush for Polyphony. Every single one of those hundreds of stories was sealed in its envelope by someone who truly believed that their story was the best story they could write and send to Polyphony, and that it would be the best story we would read in our editorial delight.
I know this thought isn't true. A cursory scan of authorial blogs or a few conversations in convention bars shows even the pathologically indifferent that writers find myriad ways to torture themselves, undercut themselves, obsess about their work and generally convince themselves to do anything other than write. In fact, one mark of becoming a pro is passing beyond this sort of self-nagging. I don't know if the ego-boo from sales and market/reader recognition is causal or correlative with the improvement in a writer's self-image and self-projection, but it's demonstrable.
Make no mistake, pros have their own doubts, worries and fears. But an established writer has a different set of needs to prove, a different set of issues to confront. suricattus doesn't worry where her next idea is coming from, or whether she can find the time to write. Nor kradical, ramblin_phyl, sartorias or any of our other pros in this corner of the blogosphere.
So there's this transition from aspiring writer to selling writer, for example, that specficrider and I wrote about in IROSF a few months ago, in the installment of our column entitled "Breaking the Success Barrier." But there's also an analogous transition from selling writer to full-blown pro, and I think I'm shooting those rapids these days.
Last night I was looking at this big stack of books from the SFWA CPB, and I had a reaction vaguely similar to my thoughts about the Polyphony slush pile. I thought, "Oh great Ghu, every one of these authors believed their book was a world-beater. How else could they have ever gotten it out?" Yet, frankly, most of them aren't.
You see, I believe in my heart of hearts that each and every one of my books are world-beaters. If I didn't, I couldn't write them or sell them or do my part to get them pushed into production. I've always believed that of my short stories.
Guess what. Most of them aren't. That doesn't bother me.
This is a disconnect between logical-self and emotional-self. I have to believe I'm the best, my work is the best, to get it out the door. Once it's in the market, my personal sense of realpolitik takes over, and I'm perfectly happy with my 75%+ failure rate. My writing heart doesn't own it anymore once the manuscript is finalized. My marketing head does.
Right now my writing heart and my marketing head are colliding.
Marketing head checks in: I know perfectly well Trial of Flowers [ Clarkesworld | Amazon ] is a cool book, from a strong independent press, that might do well. Do I nourish hopes for a WFA or Hugo nom? Of course. But it's all good, no matter what. I got the darned thing out, some people will like it, more people will look for my work in the future. Mainspring will kick butt.
Writing heart checks in: The books are world-beaters, you're a unique special snowflake, go, go, go.
And I'm forced to confront the fact that my book is just another book among the dozens and dozens released each month. This book, the next book, the book after that. I got so tangled up in this I had to IM matociquala to talk me off the ledge. Which she did admirably, mostly by pointing out that my "bestest book EVAR" thought process is just my internal motivational structure, and that I was pressuring myself. Of course, then she pointed out how weird the next couple of years were going to be, with Trial of Flowers and Mainspring hitting wider and wider audiences. Making the conversation a tie, essentially, but a little wisdom from a tribal elder (or at least a tribal older) settled me down.
I guess my point is there's anxiety and transition all through the progress of a writing career. I'm not in the Big Time yet, but I can see it from here, and the possibility scares me. It also thrills me, of course. And none of this stops me from writing more, which is what it's all about.
Write more.
I hope they chisel that on my tombstone.
There's this thing I think about sometimes when I'm reading slush for Polyphony. Every single one of those hundreds of stories was sealed in its envelope by someone who truly believed that their story was the best story they could write and send to Polyphony, and that it would be the best story we would read in our editorial delight.
I know this thought isn't true. A cursory scan of authorial blogs or a few conversations in convention bars shows even the pathologically indifferent that writers find myriad ways to torture themselves, undercut themselves, obsess about their work and generally convince themselves to do anything other than write. In fact, one mark of becoming a pro is passing beyond this sort of self-nagging. I don't know if the ego-boo from sales and market/reader recognition is causal or correlative with the improvement in a writer's self-image and self-projection, but it's demonstrable.
Make no mistake, pros have their own doubts, worries and fears. But an established writer has a different set of needs to prove, a different set of issues to confront. suricattus doesn't worry where her next idea is coming from, or whether she can find the time to write. Nor kradical, ramblin_phyl, sartorias or any of our other pros in this corner of the blogosphere.
So there's this transition from aspiring writer to selling writer, for example, that specficrider and I wrote about in IROSF a few months ago, in the installment of our column entitled "Breaking the Success Barrier." But there's also an analogous transition from selling writer to full-blown pro, and I think I'm shooting those rapids these days.
Last night I was looking at this big stack of books from the SFWA CPB, and I had a reaction vaguely similar to my thoughts about the Polyphony slush pile. I thought, "Oh great Ghu, every one of these authors believed their book was a world-beater. How else could they have ever gotten it out?" Yet, frankly, most of them aren't.
You see, I believe in my heart of hearts that each and every one of my books are world-beaters. If I didn't, I couldn't write them or sell them or do my part to get them pushed into production. I've always believed that of my short stories.
Guess what. Most of them aren't. That doesn't bother me.
This is a disconnect between logical-self and emotional-self. I have to believe I'm the best, my work is the best, to get it out the door. Once it's in the market, my personal sense of realpolitik takes over, and I'm perfectly happy with my 75%+ failure rate. My writing heart doesn't own it anymore once the manuscript is finalized. My marketing head does.
Right now my writing heart and my marketing head are colliding.
Marketing head checks in: I know perfectly well Trial of Flowers [ Clarkesworld | Amazon ] is a cool book, from a strong independent press, that might do well. Do I nourish hopes for a WFA or Hugo nom? Of course. But it's all good, no matter what. I got the darned thing out, some people will like it, more people will look for my work in the future. Mainspring will kick butt.
Writing heart checks in: The books are world-beaters, you're a unique special snowflake, go, go, go.
And I'm forced to confront the fact that my book is just another book among the dozens and dozens released each month. This book, the next book, the book after that. I got so tangled up in this I had to IM matociquala to talk me off the ledge. Which she did admirably, mostly by pointing out that my "bestest book EVAR" thought process is just my internal motivational structure, and that I was pressuring myself. Of course, then she pointed out how weird the next couple of years were going to be, with Trial of Flowers and Mainspring hitting wider and wider audiences. Making the conversation a tie, essentially, but a little wisdom from a tribal elder (or at least a tribal older) settled me down.
I guess my point is there's anxiety and transition all through the progress of a writing career. I'm not in the Big Time yet, but I can see it from here, and the possibility scares me. It also thrills me, of course. And none of this stops me from writing more, which is what it's all about.
Write more.
I hope they chisel that on my tombstone.