There is an old chestnut that writing is different from other activities in that while people prefer to do other things (like play golf), writers prefer to have written. That is, they prefer to have a completed project to show to people; they don’t enjoy making the project.
The truth of this statement confronts me every day I spend interacting with various “writers” and “authors” on the internet, and it’s a truth that I am blessedly outside of. Maybe it’s just because I understand how to arrange my life, but I enjoy the process of writing. That is not to say that I enjoy every aspect of it equally or I enjoy every moment maximally at all times, but overall, I enjoy writing a book or an article, and I also enjoy having written and feeling that sense of accomplishment that completing and shipping a project brings.
If you want more info and a deeper dive into creative processes for real human beings, not vapid directives made by people with no personal life or obligations, read my manual, The Keys to Prolific Creativity, where I talk about all the various things that stop a typically creative person from finishing his or her work and getting to the have written stage in any endeavor.
More people should read my book, obviously, but I think there are certain classes of writer to whom it would be a very mild penicillin. On the one hand, you have the “writer community” types on Twitter who would prefer to spend their time complaining about the world, politics, their own lives, books, other writers, etc., than putting words into their manuscript. On the other hand, there are the “indie author” entrepreneur types who would spend their life savings and break international law if it meant they could sell a book without having to bother writing it.
Actually, I think the first type is more reachable than the second since they only need a significant mindset adjustment, while the second are mostly delusional fraudsters.
What these types want is to be an author, not write. They have a vision of themselves as something, not doing something.
I had a dream last night (this morning, really, as I was up until almost dawn with my daughter) that I was playing bass for Slayer (Tom had a hand injury). When I got up on stage, my bass strap was all maladjusted, and I realized I had forgotten how to play the songs and didn’t know the setlist. My dream (or nightmare) was about playing music. It was not about the crowd cheering for me at the end of the concert. It wasn’t about the after-party.
Authors dream about the prestige. They imagine themselves as well-respected, well-liked, “special” people that others look up to because they wrote a book. They see themselves signing books for fans or even going on a book signing tour (silly to me, a performer. If I did such a thing, the stores would be shocked to find me playing a recital before signing books). They may also imagine themselves as wealthy and (having written and busy collecting those sweet royalty checks) having lots of free time to enjoy their wealth.
For me, I want to be Tolkien, not because he was rich (he wasn’t), had free time (he was an academic and teacher and also a busy parent), or was loved (they wouldn’t even publish most of his books while he was alive), but because he created something great. He made a world that was special and real, and he wrote great stories in it. It’s the work (even with his admitted procrastination) that is worth admiring. Niggle knew how to paint a leaf. When you go to a museum, you love the painter for his great work, not because other people happened to think him good at some point.
The two hands holding the two types of writers that hate writing view the product itself as just some necessary incidental step, which is the problem. Why take up writing if not to write something special?
There is a class of “aspiring” writers (an ironic term since they do aspire to write but don’t write, an action which one usually does or does not rather than attempt) that want a vision of author that makes them a loved person. They talk about querying agents (“someone will see that I’m special”) and hoping that will lead to a publishing deal from a New York publisher (“Someone important will think that I’m good”), which will lead to their book in stores, and hungry readers will buy the special tome and come to a book signing (“People will finally love me”). Maybe you see a pattern? I met a lot of these types in literature and creative writing programs at colleges and universities.
A think part of it is the poison that affected recent generations following in the wake of the Baby Boomers. Paraphrasing Fight Club, we were all told we’d be millionaires and rock stars. Few people told us of the benefits of a manageable job that lets you take vacations and go fishing on the weekends (and write). Since most of us had absentee parents, the appeal of “being” a thing like an author is in the interpersonal, not practical, benefits. The sentiment, like many human actions of misplaced intent, is a desire to be loved.
If I was in this group, I exited it fairly quickly by means of completing work on some books. I became an independent author because the book I wanted to publish, I found out, would never be published. It was a samurai novel and, I was informed, it was in both a genre that didn’t exist and its content was problematic for any modern publisher. Nobody would buy it.
So, I took the steps to put it out myself, not wanting my work to simply vanish into the ether. It turns out there are people out there who want to read Samurai novels. Those people just don’t happen to work for traditional publishing houses. Maybe you are one of them, in which case, Muramasa: Blood Drinker is for you.
Please understand that in the early 2010s, I was fairly green as a writer and had no preconceived ideas or opinions regarding independent publishing or traditional publishing. I didn’t care about Old Pub’s attitude regarding Amazon, and I didn’t know how the big publishers truly were. I explored traditional first because that was the method that the authors I already knew about used to publish their books and publishing a book myself seemed like a rather large pain in the ass. It was and is, but it is also the only option for many of us writing outside the mainstream or who are members of anathematized groups.
What I found in the indie publishing world was that, rather than being a collection of outsiders publishing weird books, it was (at least to appearances) a bunch of people being hyper-generic. That is, they hammered their genres hard and used laundry lists of niche tropes to create a product for a person. They were also eclipsing Old Pub because of that market focus. That surface obsession with marketability signaled a deeper reality that many successful indie authors view their work as a means to an end, and that end is similar to the vision from the other side.
They want to be successful. They want to call themselves best-selling authors, so everything is geared toward being a best-seller. The emphasis is on a product that Amazon would sell to a targeted group of people based on their prior expectations. The cover is an ad. The blurb is the ad copy. The reviews are social proofs. Any author now ought to understand all of these things, but I noticed “authorpreneurs” and other types wholly focused on this marketing pipeline, to the point where any successful author started looking for ways to not write books anymore.
To me, that rather defeats the point of writing, but it is a development I’ve seen over and over. As the author builds his business, the really valuable part is the big strokes of the product and the ad copy; the prose and dialogue aren’t really an artistic expression of the self and, therefore, can be done by anybody willing to follow a two-page outline. Co-writers and ghostwriters are everywhere, with the goal being to release as many books as possible in as short a time as possible to game the algorithm. The author is just a loose name associated with the real brand, which is an extended series of books.
It makes sense that the first people to get hyped over AI writing were indie authors since they, like others, wanted to be writers more than they wanted to write. Having the computer pump out an easily editable manuscript is a big labor savings over having someone in the Philippines ghostwrite your first draft, even if you do pay him slave wages. It could even be better! As long as it hit the genre right, and your cover (also possibly AI-generated) and ad copy (also AI-generated) were on-point, you could sell even more books and be even more successful. You could A/B test not just your ad copy and covers, but even the BOOK ITSELF. Man! So many possibilities for gaming the Amazon system.
At that point calling yourself an author is like calling yourself a carpenter when you buy a furniture factory.
All that additional work that so many are so keen to do in order to sell a book raises the question: why sell books? Why not sell some other product that people want or need? A product that has a less volatile market with less randomness, higher margins, and doesn’t have on million other competitors in it?
The answer is that while there is prestige associated with being a successful businessman, there is more prestige associated with writing books. Chances are you would rather be Brandon Sanderson than the guy who owns all the local Subways and Pizza Huts, even though they have the same net worth.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that motivation, by the way. Lots of people choose prestigious jobs over high-paying ones, but I have noticed that indie authors far and away pursue a specific kind of prestige, which is the money-making variety. That is to say, they can’t get the prestige of being “great,” so they get the closest approximation, which is “selling,” and that, too, is often illusory. Being a “best-seller” on Amazon is most often about getting your book into a depopulated niche category (Amazon has cleaned up categories lately, but they used to have hundreds) and selling a handful of copies (that maybe you buy yourself). Hell, even big best-seller lists are editorialized and exploited.
It’s unfortunate, but lots of people get sucked into what is just vanity publishing with extra steps hoping that if they do all the business stuff right, they will get the vision of themselves they hold in their heads. Usually, though, they end up losing money. I feel for these people, which is why I have spent so much time cautioning new authors regarding how they spend their money.
The people knocking on the closed doors of Trad Pub just want a different, more personal approximation of prestige: the prestige of having some important publisher types admit you to the club of “being published.” Then, even though you only sell a dozen copies of your book (maybe to your family, just like the lowly indies), you “made it” and are a very serious producer of serious literature. Yeah, you’re still working at the writing lab, waiting for an adjunct teaching job to open up, which might mean getting a tenure track later on… but you got published! All it took was five years of writing the manuscript, two years querying agents, and another two to do editorial rewrites for the small imprint…
You get the idea. What they don’t like to do is write.
So, what about you reading this article? Well, maybe you aren’t a writer but something else and just like reading what I have to say. Thanks! But maybe you’d like to write a book. Keep in mind that writing, like anything else, is a craft, which means you’ll have to practice it to gain skill. That means writing. Looking for a magic story-writing formula will not save you the practice time necessary to master this art. There is nothing wrong with wanting to master the business side, too. But you have to start by writing.
I am an independent writer and musician. You can get my books and other benefits on my Patreon or Ko-Fi, or buy them from a retailer like Amazon.
You've nailed this, David. There is a part of the writing process that craves an audience - naturally so - just as a musician does, or an actor. Writing is, in whatever particular way, outward facing. And so there's nothing wrong with wanting to be read, or to reach a bigger audience. And if you can earn a sort of living from doing so, then that allows you to spend more time writing/creating.
But where things get lost is when it becomes ALL about selling. Then, the perceived needs of the market dicate what you should write, and how you should package and promote it, and eventually the writing process itself, and we end up with the cart before the horse. I started self-publishing because I coudn't find an outlet for the sort of thing I wanted to write. I'd had an agent, and realised that they were just another commercial funnel for the increasingly conservative tastes of publishers. So it resonates what you say about self-publishers being so genre focused - in fact, it's worse than with mainstream, because many are so desperate to get a foothold or some return that reassures them that they are genuine writers. At least mainstream publishing does occasionally take risks - albeit very small and calculated ones.
Excellent insights! I'd add that what's true for writing is also true for reading.
There are many people who say they want to read or claim they like reading, but they rarely in fact read. If pushed, they may rather go for Cliffs Notes or skim some internet summaries or watch a youtube video on the topic, instead of sitting down and actually reading a book with thought and attention.
Of course, reading doesn't set the creative demands that writing does, but many of the same basic dynamics still hold. You have to put in a degree of time and effort. And you probably have to actually LIKE to read or write, instead of just claiming you do.