5 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Writing

A long time ago, I swore that I would never write about COVID. Good God Almighty, I fucking hate COVID. Except then, I got it, the first symptoms showing up on Christmas Day, like the world’s most fucked up present. I'm fine now (I think) but it was pretty scary for a while. Even though I was vaccinated twice over, I still had what amounted to a raging head cold, with an added dose of tight chest. It was miserable. Kids, if you take one lesson away from my experiences, it is this: get freaking vaccinated. I don't even want to think about what this disease will be like if you caught it without some antibodies in your system.

One thing gave me is a lot of time to lie around, not doing much. And one of the things I thunked up were the lessons I've learned throughout my career, and the things I wish I'd known when I started. This is…let’s see, the tenth year (Jesus) since I first started writing fiction, and the seventh since I got published. I'm still very much an idiot about a lot of things, but I’ve also learned some hard earned lessons. So, at the start of the year that I think is going to be the biggest one I've ever had (FROST FILES 4!) I thought I'd take some time to break down a few things I wish I'd known I started writing.

1. Release Days Are An Anticlimax

When you first get a book published, you are obviously given publication date. That date can, quite understandably, take up outsize importance in your mind. Why wouldn't it? After all, that is the day on which your work is unleashed upon the world. The thing that you slaved over four hours and days and weeks and months and maybe even years is finally going to be available for others to read. Spoiler alert: the actual publication date is a massive anti-climax for a number of reasons.

Partly, it's because almost every bookstore will have had your book on the shelves for at least a week. They are, shall we say, not real sticklers for publication dates, especially if you're the kind of debut author who isn't going to have a massive an automatic global bestseller on your hands, as most of us are. It's also partly because no matter how much hype your book has, your life is unlikely to fundamentally change overnight. You will wake up on release day, and things will be more or less the same. As they will the day after release day. And the day after that. Take it from me: if you're going to publish a book, then you are better off not putting and your importance on the nominal release date.

2. Books Get Harder, Not Easier

This is hilarious. This is really fucking funny. You see, unlike other tasks which get easier the more you do them, books actually get harder the more you write. My first novel, Tracer, was written in a kind of delighted fugue. I was having an absolute blast, mostly because I had no idea what I was doing, no expectations, and no real concern about getting it right. Now, of course, I am very much concerned with just that, and that means that any book I right now feels a lot trickier and more arduous to do. I'm not complaining. I still love what I do. But it does irk me no end that working on my craft will only lead to things being more more difficult.

3. Showing Up Matters More Than Being Perfect

The greatest predictor of success in writing is not whether your fiction is good or not. Anybody you has read 50 Shades of Grey will be able to tell you that. You do not— absolutely do not— have to churn out talented prose every single time use down, or even most of the time. In fact, I'd say that around 70% of the time I write, I'm creating garbage. Things I cringe at when I read them again. But the thing is, no matter how crap it is, I'm going to show up tomorrow, and do it all over again. Because I know that if I keep showing up, eventually I'll write something I like.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about the authors: that we always know what to write, all of the time. Not true. Your favourite authors are not brilliant, they are just more persistent and bloody-minded then everyone else. If you show up every single day, no matter how much you don't feel like it, good things will happen. Fortunately, that's lesson I learned early on.

4. You CANNOT Do It For The Money

I am very fortunate. I have been lucky enough, and work with talented enough people, to have earned thousands and thousands of dollars making things up. I don't say this to boast; I say it to illustrate the point I’m about to make. All the money I made from writing has not come like a regular salary. It has come in dribs and drabs, in huge bursts and tiny trickles. It has been the least reliable money I have ever owned. It has made financial planning a complete clusterfuck. Now, maybe if you crack the bestseller code, and start generating gigantic royalties, you're good. But for almost every author you read, the money will be sporadic and unreliable. What that means is: you should never, ever, ever, ever write for money. You can be the best writer in the world, and earn nothing.

You have got to write because you want to tell the story. That should be the only concern. You should have an idea in your head, and burning need to know what happens next. I've tried to keep that in mind recently; I'm out of contract at the moment, which means that, technically, there won't be any more books. That of course will be a temporary situation (I hope) but it does mean that I had to remind myself that I'm doing this because I want to tell stories.

5. Be Comfortable With Delayed Gratification

Here's how it shakes out. In summer 2021, I had an idea for a fantasy novel. I finished the first draft of that novel at the start of December. I'm starting to rewrite it now, and it's probably going to be done by February. Then I’ll send it out to my agent, and my editor, and hopefully things work out and they decide to run with it. From then, it will be at least the year until I actually see it on shelves, maybe more. That means we are looking at at least two years between idea and published book. That's not so much delayed gratification as “Dear god when will it end?”

That's why you really have to enjoy the writing. It's the only thing that is going to drop feeding dopamine for the months and years you'll be waiting. I wish it wasn't this way, but it is, and I'm glad to lesson I learned early.