Eye on the Prize: Writer as Phoenix
When It’s Important to Remember Your True-and-Always Freedom
You’ve probably heard the inspiring myth of the phoenix, which rises, renewed, from the ashes of its former self. But if you go to the Wikipedia entry, here’s how the phoenix is defined: “a long-lived bird that is cyclically regenerated or reborn.”
That’s a rather sobering view of the spectacular phoenix image, but a better metaphor couldn’t exist for the long-lasting, successful writing life. For it’s not only about the capacity for regeneration of your career and refreshment of your craft but also understanding that there are cycles in publishing and that those cycles come and go, no matter what. That’s the nature of the beast.
A couple of years ago, I conducted a series of interviews with many established authors in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I asked each of them about their careers and how they’d managed to stay published for so long. Not one of them said that it had been easy or that they had always successfully ridden publishing cycles. All spoke frankly of experiencing professional difficulties of one sort or another over the years, though looking in from the outside, you might have thought that these writers led charmed lives and brilliant careers without a single flaw. Yet though they had gone through ups and downs—sometimes spectacularly so—what distinguished them all was a capacity for regeneration: for taking stock and taking action.
Over the twenty-six tumultuous, occasionally hair-raising years since I first became a published, professional writer, that’s the lesson I’ve learned, too. Never take anything for granted. Neither the positives nor the negatives are forever, and things can change with bewildering rapidity. You can’t necessarily predict them—you just need to be ready to act if you want to stand a chance of being a long-lived writer-phoenix.
Well, that’s the big picture. But what about the nitty-gritty? How do you prepare for that phoenix life and build your capacity for regeneration?
To put it in a nutshell, it’s all about being a “keeper.”
KEEP YOUR OPTIONS OPEN
Think of yourself as a writer first and foremost, without boxing yourself into a category. This type of mass categorization—as children’s author, novelist, nonfiction writer, and so on—will inevitably restrict your options, should cycles change. The same goes even more for genre. If you think of yourself, say, as only a writer of fantasy or crime or historical sagas or picture books or self-help books—or whatever it happens to be—you’ll have nowhere else to go if your chosen genre runs out of steam on the shelf, or even just for you.
Incidentally, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t gravitate to a genre; doing so is natural. We all tend to move toward what comes instinctively to our imaginations, and that’s important. But remember that there are also many connections between genres: For instance, fantasy fiction and historical sagas share much common ground, and a nimble author can easily skip from one to the other with much enjoyment—and improve her sustainability at the same time.
The writing life may be sedentary, but it is certainly not static. You don’t just get one chance; you will certainly be granted second and third and fourth chances. Unexpected opportunities and challenges arise frequently, even for those who apparently have their whole careers worked out. (Trust me, they don’t, not really. It just looks that way!) Learning to embrace some changes while steering clear of others are important lessons in a professional career.
KEEP UP WITH WHAT’S AROUND, BUT KEEP THE FAITH
Read industry news: newsletters, magazines, blogs, websites. Ask yourself questions: Which books are getting noticed and why? What’s hot right now? What is conspicuously missing?
Being aware of trends doesn’t mean having to slavishly follow them. It does, however, mean that you are well-informed, and that, if necessary, you can much more easily discover a new niche for your work in full knowledge of the ecosystem around it, as it were. An added bonus is that it may also bring new books and writers into your reading life.
Now here’s a conundrum: You need to be aware of what’s going on in the world of books, but you also need to keep true to your writerly core. Chasing fashion is the best way to be unhappy as a writer—plus you run the risk of rapidly becoming, well, unfashionable. Be ready to take risks and be flexible, but be careful not to gamble away your integrity. Does this sound contradictory? It is. In fact, it’s the creative tension between flexibility and integrity that gets the sparks flying and ensures that you’ll have the magic ingredients for regeneration.
KEEP PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS IN GOOD CONDITION
The successful writing life is made of healthy relationships, carefully nurtured. It’s all too easy to fall out with a publisher or an agent over a disappointing deal or an opportunity that went south. It’s also all too easy to fall out with your writing peers over a professional jealousy or conflict or bad review. My best advice? Think twice. Try not to blow up your bridges, no matter what the provocation. Don’t send that angry e-mail or unwise text message or put up that inflammatory Facebook post. Express your anger on a piece of paper—and then burn it or tear it to bits. It’s amazing what a relief that can be. (I’ve used this tactic more than once!)
If you have a difference of opinion that truly is too great to bridge, then it’s best to just agree to differ and move on gracefully. Who knows? Later on that person may well play a part in your professional life again, and if you’ve parted on civil terms, then it’s much easier to pick up the pieces. Plus you’ll have acquired a reputation for being a consummate professional—which is never a bad thing.
On the positive side, make sure you value and nurture good relationships. It’s not just about professional etiquette; it’s also about recognizing our common interests, indeed our common humanity. And it pays off, always. A book publicist, for instance, is much more likely to actively promote your work if you treat her like a human being rather than a sales robot programmed for your profit.
This all holds true whether you are a traditionally published author or an independent author. Successful self-publishing is all about relationships, too—whether that is with your production collaborators (designers, editors, printers, and distributors) or your readers.
KEEP CONTRIBUTING TO THE WRITING COMMUNITY
We are writers, and writing is a solitary occupation. But if we so choose, we can also be part of a big, supportive, and diverse community—the community of writers. We can become active participants and contributors in that community: by joining local writers’ groups and authors’ organizations, by joining conversations on writing blogs and websites and social media, and by starting conversations ourselves on our own blogs and websites and social media. Being part of a community doesn’t need to take a lot of time—just a willingness to contribute and a generosity of spirit.
In a practical and enjoyable way, it can also help build your profile among your peers, publishers, agents, and other professionals in the industry, as well as readers in general. And even if your publishing career becomes mired in a temporary quicksand, you can still contribute—in fact it’s even more important to do so then. People won’t forget your name if you remain a presence in the writing conversation, and it also helps in freshening up your résumé once a new publishing opportunity does come your way.
KEEP GOOD RECORDS
This might seem like a rather dull piece of advice, but it really works in creating sustainability and regeneration, and not just in a financial or administrative sense, either. If you maintain good records stretching over many years, not only can you keep track of the shape of your career but you can also see what’s worked and what hasn’t, and how sometimes over the years these things have changed places.
As well as keeping records of outgoings and incomings, over the last few years, I’ve also kept a separate literary diary in which I’ve expanded on things going on in my professional life. These now run to four books, and they are invaluable in helping me with another important aspect of the writer-phoenix life: keeping a sense of proportion. As they are honest snapshots of how I’m feeling about my writing career at a given point in time, they remind me that difficulties pass, new opportunities come to light, and that out of the ashes of a dead project, something new and wonderfully unexpected can arise.
KEEP A SENSE OF HUMOR
Once, at a book signing, someone approached me to say how much she’d enjoyed one of my earlier books. Trouble was, it wasn’t my book she was enthusing about but someone else’s—and when I gently told her that was the case, she said, “Oh—maybe you could write like that!” and scuttled away without buying a book. This experience could have been crushing—but instead, it tickled my funny bone and inspired a rather rude and bumbling character in a story!
Being able to see the light side of the struggle is part of a writer’s capacity for regeneration. By relieving anxiety, it frees the spirit—and helps inspiration soar.