Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made as a Writer

This post over on Suvudu about not querying before the book/story is ready inspired this post.

We all make mistakes, it’s the smart people who learn from them and the not-so-smart that keep making the same mistakes over and over. And even wiser people can learn from the mistakes of other people, provided they know about it. So here’s mine.

1. Querying a novel before finishing final edits on it

I was close, over halfway into my final proof and I figured I’d be done by the time anyone got to me. I mean it takes two week to two months minimum for agents to get back to you, right? Except that within two hours I had five partial requests. No, it doesn’t take weeks or months, not always. You have to be ready for that.

2. Querying before the novel was awesome.

This one I’m still split on. I queried a novel that got some really great, really flattering reads, but ultimately every agent on my list passed on it. The few people who read it liked it very much, but ultimately something about it just missed the mark when it came to being marketable. In retrospect I see now how I can improve it, and I am working on it. But I’ve already been through my agent list so even if I finish editing it I have very few places left to submit it. At this point I’m not sure if the failure was due to the problem I now see the novel having, or if it’s due to a tightening marketplace where before and agent would have worked with me and now they just can’t. I go back and forth on whether this is a mistake, or just how things worked out, and I still don’t know.

3. Playing nice.

Oh, I mean it. I’ve always known what I wanted out of my writing career, but there was a period where I was too busy trying to ingratiate myself into the community and the people I perceived as being “higher than me” in the genres I write in. I bit my tongue. I took advice I didn’t think was right, I focused on projects that depended on other people or were aimed at markets that I didn’t really trust. I played nice with people whose aims were different than mine and I sought their approval rather than the advancement of my career as I wanted it.

Ultimately I don’t think anything really bad came of this, but it did waste some time and distract me from my goals. I still try my best to be polite, but I find a gap growing between myself and some genre community circles. The bigger the gap it seems, the more people get mad at me when I don’t try to play as nice with them anymore. But I can’t. I have to focus on walking my own path.

4. Settling for any sale rather than a good one.

It happens. You see other people getting acceptances, you get antsy to sell your latest work, you go for what you think is an easy sale instead of a good sale. But even if you do get a yes (which is never guaranteed) you risk realizing after the fact that you aren’t really proud of the company your story is now keeping, or the check you got or contributor copies you got were less than spectacular. Or no one seems to read the bugger and you end up feeling like you’d been better off just putting it up on your web page or something.

Or, the story never makes it to print because the publish collapses and you had a feeling it was going to, but you really wanted to put another sale on your list.

Sometimes you can’t control any of these things. But sometimes you can face these problems and say “Yeah the book ended up being junk, but at least I was well compensated.” Also, experience has taught me that there’s a correlation between how much I’ve been paid (or the prestige of the editor/press/project at least) and how classy the sale ends up being.

Maybe this is something all writers have to learn on their own, because there are feelings associated with “satisfying” and “unsatisfying” sales that are so personal and subjective that everyone is going to be different. But it’s something that is good to keep in mind.

5. Only writing when inspired.

Yeah, I did it, and let my tell you something it goes away. Seriously you CAN train yourself to almost always be ready to write when you sit down to do so. It took me six years to write my first book, but five months to rewrite it almost completely. Practice writing regularly. Some people say every day, but I understand that’s not always possible. But by sitting down regularly to write you can train your brain and your Muse to be ready to make words when it’s writing time.

Now, some days the words come strong, and some days you’ll struggle, and some days you’ll delete everything you did the day before and start over. But you cannot fix what isn’t written and you cannot make writing habit if you don’t sit down and do it. Set realistic goals (1 page a day, 5k a week, whatever) but for gods’ sake throw out the idea that you have to be inspired to write and just sit down and do it. It will get easier.

*ETA: I’m not the only one blogging about this this week. Here’s Best Seller Anya Bast’s take on the topic.