One of the questions I get asked a lot is “how did you decide to be a writer?” And the short answer is, I didn’t. Oh, I’ve been writing since I started my first (unfinished, unpublishable) novel in seventh grade, but it was always about writing, not about being a writer.

Part of that was because I had no idea you could actually make a living as a writer. I knew people got paid for their stories, but I had no idea how much – and I certainly didn’t know anyone else who was a writer (or who wanted to be). No, I take that back; I knew my mother, who wrote for the Confessions magazines for a few years as a hobby when I was in my early teens. So what I thought I knew was that you could write and sell, but it wouldn’t be your full-time job.

But somewhere along the line, I decided that it would be kind of neat to be a “career writer,” whatever that meant. Being me, I sat down and worked out a plan: I would keep writing in my spare time, as my mother  had, until I improved enough to sell a few stories. I figured that twenty-five years ought to be long enough to learn to write one or two short stories that would be good enough to sell (I was, at this point, around twenty). That would take me up to age forty-five or so, which gave me plenty of time to both start selling and build up a nice fat savings account to live on. Then I could have a major mid-life crisis, quit my job to write, and maybe even tackle a novel…and I’d have at least a minimal track record from those two or three short stories I figured I could sell, plus that nice bank account to live on.

Things didn’t work out the way I expected.

For starters, I turned out to be a natural novelist, not a short story writer. I tried and tried to write short stories, but what I produced were unsellable plot summaries and things that read like awkwardly excerpted things from much longer works. (Not that I realized that at the time.)

The second problem was, I’m not very patient. I think that if I’d stuck to my plan and kept at the short stories, I probably could have learned to write well enough to sell a few in twenty-five years’ time, but after about two years of trying, I got this idea that I knew was a novel. And, not being a patient person, I started writing it.

I didn’t take it seriously, of course. I was still stuck on that plan, so working on the (unsaleable, horrible) short fiction came first. I worked on the novel other time, when I knew I was likely to be interrupted – lunch hour in the cafeteria, coffee breaks, waiting for my grad school class to start when the bus got me there early. Bits and scraps of time. The two- and three- hour blocks of time I carved out of the occasional weekend morning were for the (dreadful, unreadable) short stories.

And then one day, the novel was finished (there’s a whole ‘nother story behind that, but that’s a different post). And there I was, seventeen years ahead of schedule, with a complete novel manuscript and no track record of short story sales to help me sell it.

I could have stuck it in the bottom drawer of my desk, but at that point blind, dumb habit kicked in. I’d been trying to sell short stories, and I’d learned enough by then to know that the way you sold something was to keep it in circulation. Finished manuscripts got sent out, and if they came back, they got sent out again (the same day, for preference, but next morning was OK if the mail delivery was late). Sending things out was just what you did, as soon as the manuscript was as good as you could make it. 

So when I finished the first book, I sent it out, not because I thought it would sell or thought it was particularly good, but because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it and sending it out was what you were supposed to do if you were gonna be a writer.

Just like the short stories, the finished manuscript came back, rejected. It just took a little longer. And, just like with the short stories, I sent it out again as fast as I could turn it around (which also took a little longer, as I hadn’t been prepared with the right mailing supplies when it showed up the first time.)

And then one day it didn’t come back for the longest time (and there’s a whole ‘nother story there, too), and the next thing I knew, it had sold. By then I was nearly finished with my second novel (once I put the first one in the mail, I thought “Hey, that wasn’t so bad; I could do that again” and gave up on the short stories), and when I mentioned that to the editor, she asked me to send it along. So I did, and they bought that one, too.

The decision to quit my day job and write full-time came five years later, after I’d published five books and had another couple of novels in the pipeline (and finally learned how to write a halfway decent, saleable short story at least some of the time). By then, I already was a writer, and it was more a matter of not having time for two full-time careers and having to choose between them. And my two-short-story-sales-by-age-forty-five plan was long gone.

I still think it was a good plan, though.

14 Comments
  1. This is an awesome story! I look forward to the posts of when your novel was finished and your manuscript not returning for a long time… that is, if you ever get around to writing them in between the times when you are writing your novels. 😀

  2. Pat, may I re-post this as one of the Origins guest blogs on my “Rebirth of a Novel” blog? (http://heritageofclan.wordpress.com)

  3. That sounds disturbingly similar my current plan, which is “write a novel a year for the next twenty until I finally get one worth sending out.” I’m hoping it takes less time than that, but, well…

    Which were the first two novels that sold?

    • Jessica – I’ll get around to those eventually!

      Alma – Sure, and nice to see you!

      Celeste – “Shadow Magic” and “Daughter of Witches” were my first two novels. And you do NOT write stuff until you get “one worth sending out.” You send it out regardless of what you think about it, because you are not an editor. Deciding what to buy is their job, not yours. If you’d be embarassed to admit you wrote it or ashamed to have your name on it…put a pseudonym on it. But if it is finished, you send it out.

  4. That’s an amazing story. `send it out regardless… because you are not an editor.’ I’ll have to think about that one.

  5. This was so fun to read! I love that you were writing novels while your “serious” work time happened on the short stories you thought you were supposed to be writing. Our brains don’t always know the best thing for us, not right away anyway. Thank you for sharing!

  6. Oh, that is so funny . . . thank you for sharing that. It’s incredibly useful to hear how this odd work of writing actually gets done.

    I actually dropped by your blog to thank you for answering my questions so patiently, and so thoroughly, at the UM bookstore panel the other day. It was a stimulating and inspiring experience, and you are a *generous* speaker.

    Thanks again.

    P.S. Woolly Mammoths! Sphinxes! Rheumatic fever! I am *so* glad I got _The Thirteenth Child_.

  7. You’re up at the Rebirth of the Novel blog – and thank you!

  8. I finished reading your Thirteenth Child book, then read it again. I loved it very much, which tempted me to look on the internet to see when the next book was due out. At first I was a little disappointed to see it wouldn’t be out for a while, but after noticing this blog I started reading it day by day. I was thrilled to read it too, because as an aspiring writer this has given me more hints and stories that made me laugh than any other site. I have really enjoyed reading your posts, and they have given me much knowledge about how writing is really like. I’m glad this is here so I can read your updates on Frontier Magic, but also because of the posts! Thank you.

  9. At 16 I decided that if Charles de Lint could get his first novel published at by 32 (so old!) I could do the same.

    Then I got scared and tried not being a writer many times but it’s always dragged me back. I kept running away from my passion because it scared me. It took until almost 40 to accept that this big scary dream was what I had no choice buy pursue.

    Plus I knew writing was going to be work and I hated hard work (until after I had started my own business and discovered that I could work hard when I wanted to).

    Now, I enjoy it and have my own 25 year plan (of my writing helping me with my retirement from the “real world”). I’m 4 years in and exactly where I want to be.

  10. And you do NOT write stuff until you get “one worth sending out.” You send it out regardless of what you think about it, because you are not an editor. Deciding what to buy is their job, not yours. If you’d be embarassed to admit you wrote it or ashamed to have your name on it…put a pseudonym on it. But if it is finished, you send it out.

    See, the thing is– on the whole, I absolutely agree with you! If it were anyone else other than myself I’d give them the same advice! But right now I look at my own work and I know for sheer, solid fact that I just do not have basic tradecraft down. Grammar and spelling, yes. Ability to successfully put together a plot? Close to non-existent. I am getting better, each new novel I write (working on #4 this year), so I give me a couple more under my belt and I will probably get over my embarrassment and start sending them out. But twenty years is what I’m telling myself so I’m not horribly disappointed if it doesn’t happen till then.

    • Alex – I think I was kind of lucky, actually, in that I DIDN’T think I was going to “be a writer.” Just writing didn’t scare me, and I never had anybody telling me I couldn’t or shouldn’t do it. Plus, I knew perfectly well that you could write and have a day job – Mom did, after all – so I never really thought about making a living that way. It’s hard to be scared of something if you don’t think it’s even a possibility. Anyway, congratulations on your 25-year plan; hope the rest of it goes as well as the first 4 years!

      Celeste – Some folks take a while to master the craft, it’s true. And the twenty-year thing is pretty much what I did with my “two or three stories by age 45,” so I really can’t fault you on that! Just bear in mind that it’s really, really hard to judge your own writing.

  11. And you do NOT write stuff until you get “one worth sending out.” You send it out regardless of what you think about it, because you are not an editor. Deciding what to buy is their job, not yours.

    This is great advice. Thank you.

    And I have to admit, I have trouble with short stories as well. My brain seems to prefer novel or novella length works.

    • Anju – If your brain prefers novels or novellas, write those. Writing is hard enough without making it even harder by trying to do something that doesn’t come naturally. Play to your strengths.