And I’m not talking about dashing werewolves or evil serial killers. Today I’m talking about writer jealousy.

Between rejections and trends and opportunities we never see (and people who started the publishing game before us) it’s hard not to be jealous. And really, why bother? Jealousy is a valid emotion, as much as depression or elation and let’s face it, none of us is perfect. So it’s okay to feel frustrated or depressed or even jealous. What you can’t do is let these feeling override your professionalism.

First that’s because they very often go hand in hand. Many times jealousy sparks because right when you’re facing a new batch of rejections someone else posts on their Facebook or blog or Twitter about their latest sale. While you struggle to get full reads and get noticed by editors at the big wigs of genre publishing someone else is boasting hundreds of credits. But jealousy is as much genuine jealousy as a new face of frustration and self-doubt. Its always helpful to step back and ask why you’re jealous because it could just be that you’re overwhelmed and frustrated with your own career.

Second there’s also a HUGE chance that there is nothing to be jealous about. This is a twofold point because sometimes you need to remind yourself that just because someone’s sale LOOKS effortless doesn’t mean it is. I know a few authors like this that simply don’t talk about how hard it was to get published. One bestseller I know spent over ten years trying to sell, and had to deal with a completely horrible agent experience (hmm, come to think of it I know many authors who could tell this tale) before they ended up with a contract. Just because you don’t see them doing blogs online about how hard it is doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard (see my What They Don’t Tell You About Writing post for an idea on how things change after people think you’ve “made it”). Point is, it looks effortless when you see the product and not all the work behind it. And just because someone lands a sale doesn’t mean they haven’t worked every bit as hard as you have for it.

The second side of this one starts similar; don’t be jealous because you don’t know the full story of the sale. But it continues with the knowledge that presses close all the time. And projects bomb all the time. And there is a massive pile of really low quality magazines and anthos out there. I won’t name names (and the sad fact is that the lower the pay scale the more likely it is that these projects will end up filled with stinker stories. In my last post Maurice Broaddus, editor of the acclaimed Dark Faith mentioned that for every 100 stories about 2 were good. High paying markets attract crap fiction and good fiction, a lot of both. Lower paying markets tend to attract less of the good stuff. Not that they don’t attract any, just there are fewer good stories proportionately.) but I will give you possibly the best piece of advice I’ve ever learned writing: It is better (career-wise) to be rejected than to be published poorly. Rejections do not hurt anywhere as bad as being embarrassed of your fiction or the company it keeps.

So take into consideration where these sales are coming from, what they’re doing for their authors–if anything. A lot of people see some measure of success and end up spending some times spinning their wheels at a level they’re comfortable with and have seen some success with. It’s hard to decide whether to aim for something you might not reach, or go for the sure thing, but if you want to advance, you have to always aim for higher than where you are.

Furthermore writing careers are not set advancement paths. Writers and careers do not mature at the same pace or time. I know several artist types who put in a lot of work, then were forced to take a break, then came back to some success. Some hit big with their first book, some with their fifth. Tor’s (well-deserved for being so awesome) darling Cherie Priest published six novels before hitting it bigger with Boneshaker. Clearly some readers and publishers saw her skill and continued to buy her work until the rest of the world caught on last year. And it happens like that all the time. The fiction force that is Charlaine Harris had two whole series before the Sookie Stackhouse hit real big.

Careers take different paths, influenced by things completely outside of the realm of a writer’s control. One more example from my own favorite genre; There’s no doubt that Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake books contributed to the rise of urban fantasy. But Hamilton and Blake can’t be given credit alone for the popularity of the genre because the series was joined quickly by a number of other really good authors, some of which only copied Hamilton’s work, or outclassed it completely, or connected with readers looking for something different. You can’t separate Hamilton’s career from the rise of urban fantasy, but neither can you give it all the credit.

The truth is that the only thing your career can be compared to is your goals. Those are the only standard that matter.

So next time you feel jealous take a step back, rant to a friend who won’t repeat what you say, then look at what’s making you jealous again, because you might see something new. Or you might be able to reshape your own reactions so that every sale of a friend is a triumph you can share in. Life is more fun when there are more triumphs and celebrations rather than crushing blows. How you take the sales of the writers around is one way to make your writing career smoother, easier to handle, and more satisfying.

My third topic for this week is on the politics of editing and invitations to anthologies. I’m not linking to online flame wars (um, this time) but the topic has come up elsewhere. I do not know the full scope of that other fight, I only know what a casual person sees looking in from the outside.

One more thing that makes having a writing career hard is the flexibility of the roles. The fellow writer you’re drinking screwdrivers with and gossiping to tonight might just be putting out a call for submissions for an anthology or landing a job editing for a magazine tomorrow. Unlike many other fields there’s a lot of flexibility in publishing as editors become agents, or writers become editors or publishers themselves. The relationship is especially more fluid in the small presses and genres and it can, obviously, be VERY hard to deal with. This snake’ll bite you in the ass y’all.

It’s impossible to wear a single “hat” (though I hate that analogy, it’s largely understandable) and not piss people off with so many egos involved, much less someone who you meet as a writer, but you also know works as an editor. On the editor side people will expect you to invite them into your project just because they’ve been friendly to you. People will expect a nudge up in the slush, if not a guaranteed place. And as an editor you can’t help thinking every time you meet a writer that this is what they want from you. (Also common, the “Hey look at where all the stories you rejected got published” method and the “You’ll be sorry when I hit it big” folks. FYI: No agent or editor is going to regret passing on your work because you hit it big later. They’re in this for the love, the passion and for the individual project too. They have to accept the possibility of passing on a JK Rowling because they don’t believe in the story just like writers must accept rejection as part of the process.)

On the writing side of things you expect people who know you, who you’ve helped and promoted and loved to give you that chance. The thing is, sometimes they can’t. If you don’t know why, look back at my post Monday on rejection. It does hurt when an editor says they liked your work, but they don’t invite you into an antho. But they are NOT under any obligation to invite you. Hell, I can’t stand Stephen King’s style and if I was editing an antho and the King offered me a story for it I’d be under no obligation to accept it.

An invitation to submit is like a letter of interest. “I’ve read your work and am interested in working with you on this project.” That’s it. The idea that certain people should have been invited, or worse, guaranteed a place, just because they have a recognizable name (potentially) is ridiculous. Bashing the editors and saying there are personal reasons there instead of taste is deplorable–even if it might be true.

I’ve had the “be careful what you review because the people you’re criticizing now might be your peers later” conversation quite a few times. Some people I know have chosen to give up reviewing once they could write full time to avoid conflict. I’ve feared that someday I might be faced with the same choice. The fact is that I review in part because it encourages me to read, widely, and to think about what I’ve read. I want to remember that I’m a reader first, and a writer second. At this time it’s a risk I’m willing to continue to take. (Besides, if Charlaine Harris can still post the occasional review, why can’t I?)

Would it hurt if someone refused to accept my work because I’d given them a review they didn’t like? Well yeah. That could be the point. Sure people exclude others and reject people at times just to hurt them. But that’s childish and petty and those who do that are sooner or later figured out because they do that to everyone. Not to mention I wouldn’t want to put my work in the hands of someone who would do that in the first place. But it could also happen because the editor recognizes that we don’t have the same vision for a story, or a theme, or a genre, and decides to spend their time working with someone else.

And in the end, does it matter? Do you really want to force yourself where you aren’t welcome? Can anything good come of you demanding to be included?

Books, anthologies, magazines, there are invite only projects all the time. It saves the editor time, allows them to more tightly focus the book toward their vision. The best projects, in my opinion, are part invite and part open call. But not everyone thinks so. I fail to see how throwing a fit (and flinging accusations) online or even just in private makes anything better. If anything you just make it perfectly clear to a wider audience why the editor didn’t want to work with you in the first place.

I have been lucky to have been invited to a few (5 or 6) anthologies. I have made it into exactly one. Invitations aren’t guarantees of acceptance either. In the end no one owes you an invite, or an acceptance. That’s the hard truth of turning art into commerce based on subjective taste. If you can’t take the fact that there are invite only anthos being put together all the time in this field then reconsider sticking around. It’s hard enough without your meltdowns and mudslinging. And furthermore there are MORE markets open to general submissions and many of them (Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Apex, Tor…oh hell, just go to duotrope or ralan and look it up for yourself) are nothing to scoff at.

And of course, good luck!

This isn’t the blog you expect it to be. I’m not about to talk about why I write, or ask why you do. I just want you to think about it so you’re in the right frame of mind for where I’m going.

Last week a Twitter friend of mine who edits a zine discovered a person he’d bought several stories from–for 1st English rights–had blatantly lied to him about those rights being available. The submitter had sent the editor stories that had already been published–multiple times–and said they were unpublished. This launched a discussion about professionalism in writing, of which this submitter clearly had none. Rights can be a tricky business (one of the reasons authors get agents). When you are agentless you have to navigate this on your own, but most markets understand this and are pretty upfront about what they ask for. No reprints means they want a story that has never been published before. So if your story has already appeared in a magazine, much less multiple magazines, it’s clearly a reprint and submitting it as original is very, very unprofessional.

Then, as these things go, someone pointed out that the zine in question only pay $10 for stories and said something along the lines of “if you want people to treat you professionally pay professional rates”. And in the comments of that little spin off convo someone else mentioned that writers should be happy for anything they get for their fiction, even a pat on the back.

All three of these things could be separate rants, but they came out together (and the last two often appear together) so together I’m keeping them. Which brings me back to this little rant’s title: Why do you write?

There’s lots of reasons to write, and lots of seemingly pretentious reasons people give (let’s face it “I write because I have to” sounds pretentious. It’s not, and any artist will immediately understand, and they probably wouldn’t have asked you why in the first place. But to a non-artist it’s not really understood.) But let’s focus on the two reasons that come down to money matters; writing for hobby and writing for career.

Let me first note that in either one professionalism should not come into question. You might not be trying to build a career in writing, but others might be, including the editors and publishers you might be dealing with.  You still need to respect guidelines, be courteous to others, even if you never meet them face to face, and always send in your best work.

To a hobbyist writer it’s about writing, or being part of genre fandom. It’s about putting words on a page, having them make sense and be entertaining, and the pleasure of seeing your byline in print. And let me tell you an obvious secret, we’re all hobbyists at heart. Writers who don’t write for the pleasure of it, for the fun of it, for the moment we get our contributor copies or a kind word from a reader, don’t stay writers for long. This passion is what makes it possible to send out our work after rejection and get past that point in a project where we’re convinced it’s all utter shit and should be burned as to not infect other people’s projects. (Even Neil Gaiman, writer superstar, feels this way, so who are we mere mortals to be different?)

But at some point some of us decide we want more. We want to do this professionally. We want a career in writing, knowing how hard it is, and knowing that it will probably be a second or even third job. A career is different than a hobby because there writing is not its own reward, advancement is. Success is the reward. Success is defined in many ways. Money, more contracts, audience recognition, awards, professional reputation…it’s these things that make a career. It’s the hobby bits that make it a satisfying career. But choosing to build a career brings other goals into mind. Writing is no longer the end goal, but publishing well, building an audience and a name become just as important as writing those words. (Luckily good words help in the whole getting published and building an audience thing.)

The zine in question, again which only pays $10 a story has been fired at for not being professional itself. That depends on how you define professional. The editor has every right to expect others to hold up their end of the contract, as he is expected to hold up his. Submitters know how much they pay, and if they don’t like that they shouldn’t submit. Writers who can reliably get semi pro or pro rates for their work have no real reason to accept $10 for first rights to a story, neither do they have any obligation to submit. It would be nice if all markets paid pro or even at least semi pro rates. But that’s not the purpose of all magazines. Not all magazines want to get to the level of Asimov’s. For some it’s just about being entry level, being part of the genre. And let’s face it getting to the level where you have to think about business things (advertisers, tax forms, growing your market) can take a hell of a lot of the enjoyment out of things.

I don’t blame people for not wanting to strip away those things from something they do for the love of it. It’s not easy to turn a hobby into a career. Emotionally it can be absolutely devastating. The fact is that most people never make it when you have to make it about business rather than enjoyment.

There’s nothing wrong with being a hobbyist, as a market or as a writer. In a way I sort of envy those who don’t have to worry about, for example, what being more successful will mean for their taxes. In high school I took a journalism class and was crushed to realize that most of the work in putting out a paper is getting ads. I wanted to be a writer, not an ad seller. Choosing why you’re writing is essential because you’re defining what it is that you want to get our of writing.

Now, the idea that writers should be happy with whatever they get, even if it’s only a pat on the back is utterly ridiculous. As in every profession AND hobby, writers have the right to demand a certain price for their work. If a hobbyist baker makes you a wedding cake you can expect it to cost less than a professional bakery, but expecting it to be made for a pat on the back is outright silly. No one would expect a hobbyist carpenter to work for free, or a hobbyist leatherworker, or even a hobbyist musician. At conventions and fairs and online you see people who make a few extra bucks doing something they love and when you’re looking down at handmade jewelry, even if you know the person will be at their “real job” as a bank teller tomorrow morning, it never occurs to you that they should just give you their jewelry because you like it. So why do we expect even a hobbyist writer to submit to that?

There’s nothing wrong with a hobbyist market or with writing for fun, with profit being a cherry on the top. But there is something wrong with devaluing a person’s time, effort and WORK making it only worth what crumbs of appreciation people can be bothered to toss at the maker. If a writer sets a low price for their work in exchange for better odds at getting published or less work required, that’s their choice. But demanding that all workers accept a certain level of pay, or that all markets give a certain level of pay misses the point for which these markets and writers work.

Finally, tossing out accusations of elitism and snobbery to those who are working toward different goals and demand a different pay scale in turn is no better than those who are dismissing low pay markets as scum. No, token pay markets aren’t going to get you noticed by big editors or get you a big publishing deal. But sometimes all you want out of something is encouragement to keep going.

You have to know why it is that your write, what your goal is when you send out that story, what you want from your words. Once you decide that then you take the path that’s right for you, not the one that everyone else says you should take.

And to be fair some of us like the idea of women putting their mouths on us too.

So I read an agent blog that really upset me. I found it offensive on several levels and I want to rant about it very badly. Except lord forbid anyone speak ill of agents or anyone in the publishing industry. (Never mind that disagreement and debate, often passionate, is something I treasure about my closet friendships, and I’ve been known to start friendships by disagreeing with people.)

But instead I’m going to tell you about my absolute adoration for horses and horseback riding.

If you read my blog on the books I read as a teen you can probably guess that I’ve always loved horses. As a child I snapped up every picture that was horse related (and really only loved unicorns because they were more magical, and usually smarter, horses) and I read every horse themed book I could find, including a few from the library that were almost twice as old as I was. If it had a horse on it, I wanted it. If it had a horse in it I read it.

Then one day, in my early teens I got tired of fantasizing. I wanted to really ride, to really be around horses. I found a local barn that worked out of a city park, that was not-expensive and asked for a trail ride for my birthday. Once I was there I noticed a handful of teen girls running around helping out. So I asked how I could get the job. The rules were: You had to be 13 (which I had just turned!) and you had to work for free. But you got to spend a lot of time around horses, and got to ride for at least half an hour a day for free. So I started working weekends at the barn.

And I LOVED it.

Then came the incident. I was targeted for bullying a few months in. I ignored a lot of it, and admittedly I was a teenage girl, so I made my fair share of bad decisions as well. But one day when we were lining the horses up for the paying customers one of the people who was bullying me pulled a horse with the very bad habit of kicking when others got too close to her between the horse I was holding and the horse in front of me. The mare lashed out rather spectacularly and if the gelding I was holding hadn’t yanked me back I would have been kicked in the head. (One of the good things about writing is that your manuscript will never kick you in the head, or rear up and flip over on you. The chances of it happening with a horse is low, but it can happen.) Now the girl did get in serious trouble (a 2 week ban from the barn) but when she came back it was a significantly larger chip on her shoulder and dealing with animals that weigh hundreds of pounds, I just didn’t feel safe. So I made the very sad decision to not go back.

Broke my heart. My dream died a little bit. But it didn’t go away. A year or so later I heard a new barn had opened up, that ran in close to the same way in a different park. So same, this is what I want for my birthday, oh by the way, do you need volunteers? Why yes, they did! They were completely without volunteers and I had experience!

Awesome! So began my longer stint in horsing. This one lasted about two years. It was all kinds of fun in the way that the other ones weren’t. In the winter, when the barn closed to the public the horses still need exercising and I got to help. And that summer I was hired (as in actually got paid!) to clean stalls and assist with the summer camps. Unfortunately they also brought in a trail lead who took a disliking to me, and so there was some bullying/clique-behavior again. but this time fucking no one was going to take my dream away from me. I wan’t going to leave until they told me to my face “We don’t want you here”.

Except then all the other volunteers bought horses. And my dad had lost his job and I’d given most of the money I made that summer to him. So it was pretty clear that they lived a life of dashing down to the barn to ride for a few hours before going off to school, and I didn’t. I didn’t have the family support a teen needed for horse ownership, or riding lessons, so if I was going to act on that dream I needed to be able to afford it and drive there, myself.

So a lot happened after that in my life. And at times I literally ache to brush a horse or lift tack, or rake hay out of an aisle. but let me tell you something ultimately dream crushing about horses–they’re fucking expensive. To buy, to maintain, to ride, to train, to breed. They cost a lot of money. I started looking into lessons, but there’s two flaws there; they, too, are expensive, and most barns focus very strongly on competing. I’m not interested in competing (and I don’t have the money for the higher level lessons, which start at $45 in the area). I just want to ride (and those lessons are still at the lowest I’ve found $25 for 45 minutes.) The gas costs to get out to barns from m side of town are equally scary. I mean, 20 minutes at least one way, then $25+ for lessons, then time to drive home.

Oh, it won’t stop me. It’ll delay me. It’ll make things harder. It’ll mean I’ll sit here looking at horse pictures on the net and feeling that clench in my chest, feeling so amazingly driven, and yet like the whole world is trying to stop me from pursuing that dream. I watch shows on KET and can almost feel the grit of sweat and dirt, I can almost smell the hay and the leather and the warm dusty scent of the horses themselves.

As an adult I have the freedom of being able to spend money on what I want to, and being able to drive where I want to go. But I also am saddled with the responsibility to put my dreams behind my family’s well being. Sometimes I think the only way I’ll ever be able to ride again (or groom, or hell, even muck stalls) is if I get rich. Other days I’m damned determined not to let the amoun in my bank account stop me.

There are always ways around financial restrictions. But very few things are a dream crushing as discounting a person’s passion, ability and drive just because they don’t have the cash to line the pockets of those who possess the objects of dreams. No, it’s not any barn owner’s job to let me ride just because I want to really, really badly. They have to pay bills too.

But it’s a very sad thing when accomplishing dreams becomes not about ability and skill and fighting against the odds, but only things that the rich and the entitled can do. And it’s a terrible thing when people assume paying for something is the only way you can show you’re serious about you passion. Funny, isn’t it? How that’s the exact same thing rip off editors and self publishers say. “Well if you’re serious about you career you HAVE to pay editors and self publish because that’s the only way to break in.”

Yeah, agents should make more for all the work they do. But not off the backs of writers, especially not when you consider agencies have a stable of writers who they can profit off of, but writers are limited in their number of products. Sadly, I think that writing, and likely agenting as well, are becoming second jobs, rather than something you can do to support yourself. But charging an entry fee for the instructor to even consider giving you a ride, much less a lesson, dismissing those who can’t pay it as not serious about their craft all the while claiming the applicants complaining because you just want to make money is unfair (or worse, profiling, akin to racial profiling) is a bit much.

Writing Riding is hard. It’s already filled with constant demands, hoops to jump through, close calls, near misses, tiny victories and passionate failures. Even if you read all the books, take all the lessons, perform beautifully in the ring you could fail due to chance, subjective moods of the judges, and being outclassed by the competitors. Picking the shows agents to the best of your ability, polishing your performance query, and making sure your horse manuscript is in the best shape that it can be still doesn’t guarantee success. Why make it harder by making riding publishing something only people who have spendable cash floor can even consider doing?

Ultimately, what K.D. James said here is true. Allow me her to summarize:

When I’m ready to sell my product, I’ll enter the market as it exists at that time. Or stay out of the market until it improves. Or find another market. Those are my choices.

But hey, this is my blog, and I’ll rant if I want to. (Also I’m ranting after working for the day, while preparing dinner.)

So a lot lately I’ve been experiencing preconceived notions based on book page counts. There’s been Stephen King’s massive tome, Under the Dome, clicking it at 1074 pages. Now I’m not a King fan, but I do have an appendage or two stuck in the horror pie and it’s impossible not to hear about the god that is King in those circles. I have to admit I wouldn’t pick up Under the Dome, even if I was wanting to reconsider my dislike of King’s style because my major problem with King is that he’s just way too long winded for my tastes. If i feel this way about his 300-400 page books, I can only imagine how bad this book would be.

Then there’s also been The Passage, an 800 page, much hyped book by Justin Cronin. Again at 800 pages I can’t help thinking something somewhere could have been cut out to make it a tighter book. Heck, I’m a Harry Potter fan and I still think the last few books could have been improved with the loss of at least a hundred pages each.

On the other side of things I’ve read two novelettes for review lately that at about 30 pages each just weren’t enough to do more than pass a bit of time. Now in the modern world of smart phones and ereaders a 30 page story still could mean the difference between sitting at the doctor’s office or DMV and getting agitated and angry, or having a decent way to pass that unavoidable wait time. But since most readers still aren’t reading like that, ow am I, Michele sitting on her couch looking for a great story, supposed to take one that takes me less time to read than wating an episode of CSI would take?

Of course, I’m not exactly neutral on the subject. My novella Rot is about 60 pages, including illustrations, not necessarily a satisfying length for some readers. But after I wrote it I spent a lot of time considering how I’d market it. It’s a damn awkward length, not a novella that might show up in bookstores, since those seem to be around 100 pages in length to sell well. But it would have been impossible to cut the length down to a longer short story.

As a writer I know that sometimes these kinds of stories just happen, and you’re stuck wondering how or even if you should try to sell it, or just wait until you’re famous enough to put out a collection and stick it in there. As a reader I know I also judge a book based on word count, even sometimes shying away from long works from writers who are new to me, or not being willing to pay for a very short work from an author I don’ t already auto-buy.

So what about you, do you get intimidated by, or pass on books based on their page count?

This post is about the bad things, or at least the sad things, that many writers don’t ever talk about. No, I’m not maudlin at the moment, but being an author isn’t all sunshine and rainbow (or blood and guts, depending on what you write).

-It doesn’t stop being a fight.

You think it’s a fight to get words done and get submissions out and get an editors attention? This fight doesn’t magically stop when you’re published, it just shifts. Before you fight to get words in, but after that sale you might have contract, which legally binds you into delivering the next book on a set schedule. Yeah, lots of publishers are understanding, but writing isn’t about stolen snatches of time anymore, it’s about a second (or third) job. And you might be getting read now, but that also means everyone and their mother has the right to judge your books (and often they think they have the right to judge your life too, and many authors can tell you about the completely off base hate mail they’ve received because of a comment on a board, or a blog, Twitter, or just something from their book, or worse something someone told them about the book.) There’s also the Lost effect, where your book or range of work has wowed readers so much that they come to expect the utterly mind blowing from you, and eventually almost nothing you can do is as good as the “good old days” when your audience was experiencing your work for the first time. That’s not even getting into things like trying to promo, and watching your sales numbers.

-It gets lonelier the more successful you get.

It’s a really sad fact, but when you’re a newbie you can waste tons of time on message boards and blogs and writing sites, in crit groups and writing fan letters. You can openly talk about your insecurities and your small victories, your irritations and disappointments. Then you sell something and all of a sudden you’re an author, and a few things happen. (Oh, they will happen. In varying degrees, but they’ll happen.)

First, you’ll run into people who now want your time, your opinion and your help. Most will be nice about it. Some will be asshats and just demand it, often because they bought your book and think that means you owe them. But almost all had very little to no time for you, if they even knew you at all, before your big break (or little break).

Second, you’ll run into people who were friendly/your friend before. But if you aren’t at the same place in your career as them, or you are focused on meeting contracts or other obligations, you’ll become known as an elitist, too good to hang out with them anymore. Most will just let you go with some sadness (and believe me, you get a little sad too, when you don’t have the time to decompress and talk/vent). Some, however, will get angry at you, or bitter at your position (because success is relative, one book does not a career make). They might go so far as to demand something from you for supporting you and being your friend for so long, or they might get upset and furious because you aren’t submitting to the same places as them, and aren’t after the same kind of career as them. Unfortunately I’ve seen this be much worse in the small press and epresses, where there can be a strong attitude of loyalty, to the point of silliness, and you can be accused of all manner of things if you don’t submit solely to the small presses, blindly support every person you know who opens their own magazine. The truth is, some projects are meant for the small press. And some are meant for the large press. But in some heads loyalty doesn’t allow for that.

Third, you’ll run into people who don’t care. Which can be refreshing. Unless they don’t care because you’re not Dan Brown, so why should they give a damn about you.

Fourth, you’ll run into people who don’t see you as a person, but as a name who can give them a short cut. You’ll never be a person to these people, just a challenge and then either a conquest or a failure.

Fifth, you’ll run into fans (may the gods love them). They won’t always be fans of your work (Hi crazy “The Anita Blake books were written about me” lady!) but most will love just sharing their passion and knowledge with you. A few though will go too far. These are the “I’ve got a story idea you should write” (which I’ve already gotten a lot of and I’m only a baby writer), the “On page 46 you did this but what you should have done…” people, and the people who subsequently expect all your future work to be exactly like the book they fell in love with you over.

Some days you’ll long for the time when you were only trying to get editors to read your work, and those editors, at least, were professional to deal with.

- Working from home sucks ass.

Yeah, I can sleep in. Yeah I can write in my pajamas. But I also sit down to write and am interrupted by someone needing a ride, or a kiddo fight that needs to be broken up, a friend who has to be somewhere five minutes ago and needs me to watch their kid for a few hours until the other partner gets off work, the “I’m not going to make it in time, can you pick my kid up from school” person, the “why haven’t you blogged today” person, or the plumber, or the cable company or just some jerk teasing your dog outside. Jobs that you have to get up and go to are for a set time, and you know you’re supposed to be working during that time. Jobs at home become “Oh she’s just playing on the computer” or “She’s just reading and I’m bored, I’ll chat for a bit”. (By the way my career entails writing and reviewing, and my backlog pretty much means that even if I’m reading a book by an author I love I’m also reading it for review, and there are a dozen more waiting in line behind it. Which means reading IS still work, and DOES still need to get done, just like everything else on my to do list.)

In short, when you work from home you’re the one that’s always called upon to drop everything for other shit (true, it’s sometimes other important shit), and because the other people have set schedules and you don’t both other people and you yourself will say “Oh you can just work later tonight” or “while the kids are at school tomorrow”. Except the interruptions DON’T end, and you are just as likely to get asked to put off writing tomorrow during school time as you were today.

-You can’t be yourself anymore, you have to be “[Name] Professional Author” now.

As you get more of a following you will find yourself under more criticism for everything you do. Before when something angered you, you could make a vague reference about it to online friends, but now everyone and your mother are your Facebook friends, and not only will the person in question know you’re referring to them, but half a dozen other people will think you’re referring to them and send you mails about it.

Even if you’re just complaining in general about something (low paying markets, classic mash up novels, whatever) someone will think you are talking about them and react in kind. So you find yourself needing to be online, to have a presence and interact with established and potential readers, but you also find yourself completely incapable of actually being yourself anymore. You censor yourself, so as not to offend anyone. Then you get mad because you can’t speak your mind anymore, and because none of these people are really your friends if you can’t be yourself around them. And you want to choke on this teeth-baring sense of shut the fuck up and be nice to EVERYONE, when they are completely open to ripping your work apart, and making assumptions about your life based on what you chose to write about. Or you just pull back and stop interacting, at which point you’re elitist and disloyal to the fans who put you where you are.

- You forget why you started this.

Then you get wrapped up in all the things above, all the disappointments and frustrations and the natures of people. And you forget that this isn’t about the fan reaction. This isn’t about winning an award. This isn’t even about getting your next contract. You write because you love to. You love the words, the spinning of a plot, the slow reveal of characters. But all that get buried in publishing. It gets buried in your sales numbers, and dealing with people and you forget why you’re doing it, outside of the contracts, and the fan demand and the money.

So let me remind you; you’re doing it for the stories. For the process of putting words together and making them beautiful. You’re doing it for the nagging characters in your head that wouldn’t exist if you didn’t give them a voice. For the part of you that wants to know “What would happen if…” or even “Can I get away with…” You’re doing it for the amazement of how a line becomes a paragraph, becomes a page, becomes a chapter, becomes a book. Of how your own prose can still surprise you and grab you. Your doing it because you love it and you need to remember that, because there are times that all that bad stuff will overwhelm and disappoint you, and you fight back by knowing why you’re there in the first place.