Persistence

January 11, 2010

A friend of mine is a writer. He doesn't do it for a living, although he has at one time. He's had jobs/careers in a variety of areas, including journalism, computers, and marketing. He's currently an elementary school teacher, where, as far as I can tell, he's quite happy. He's had three novels published and dozens of short stories. He's also written several well-received biographies.

Recently, my friend realized that he was closing in on 50-years-of-age and time was sort of limited. He took a hard look at his publishing history, how well his work was received, how much time he had to give to it, and decided he needed to focus on one type of writing. That writing is likely to be the nonfiction books, particularly in that each one takes about 3 years to complete. His nonfiction books have received awards, critical acclaim, and decent sales. His fiction, which he likes to write more (probably) haven't received much of anything except some nice reviews and fairly modest sales with precious little money.

I spoke to him recently about this and he commented that if he tried to continue to write fiction simultaneously with the biographies, it would take him 10 years to write the next biography, and since he was 50, he was acutely aware that it was time to prioritize. It was also, he said, an extremely difficult decision.

Oh boy, do I hear him. Which is why we talked about it.

I'm fairly certain that by now most published and unpublished novelists have heard the expression: Repeatedly trying to accomplish something the same way with no success is the mark of insanity. (There must be a better way to say it).

At the very least, it's a sign of an incipient obsessive-compulsive disorder. Medication may be in order.

It's a complicated topic. Very few--some, but not many--whip off a novel manuscript and get it published. Generally they have at least a few "trunk" novels, sometimes many more. And, in fact, I would guess that most novelists have a bunch of unpublished and unpublishable novels laying around before they succeeded.

So how long? How persistent should you be?

Well, no answer. And I'm not at all convinced that my friend won't slip in some fiction here and there while he works on his next book (under contract).

I face this a lot, though. I think by most standards my nonfiction is quite successful. My fiction, although nicely blurbed by some well-known writers, doesn't generally get reviewed, is more or less critically ignored, and to-date isn't really gathering tons of readers and as a result, isn't delivering much money, either.

So how long should I keep hammering away at it? Have I, as a matter of fact, passed the point of gentlemanly OCD into What's-Your-Dosage-Land?

No answer. None whatsoever. Twenty-plus years ago an editor at St. Martin's Press "almost" published my second novel manuscript before being talked out of it by an associate. At that time we were guessing an advance would be $15,000 or so. In that I was making about $20,000 a year at the time, that seemed pretty amazing. Now, in 2010, I'd be fairly happy with a $15,000 advance, even though my income is significantly higher than $20,000 a year.

The time goes by quickly and it's sort of shocking to step back, take a breath, realize you've traveled quite a huge distance since you first tried writing novel; it's also slightly startling to realize that you set off on the journey with an expectation of a certain route and a specific destination, only to discover you wandered off course somewhere and maybe that's fine, the territory you're traveling in actually might be better than the one you were headed for.

So what do you think? Is there a point where you've crossed the fuzzy gray border of nutty behavior with your pursuit of authordom?