Swimming Upstream Against An Unforgiving Current
Burnout and that one magic thing plus a giveaway link
It is a truth universally acknowledged (or at least acknowledged by me, about me) that burnout for a writer most often stems from the stressors that lie out of my control but which materially and emotionally affect me regardless.
Publishing is a hard business. A string of glorious successes (and truly wonderful as they are for those who enjoy them) are not the commonplace experience of most writers. How “success” is measured can itself be a way of lifting up writers or tearing them down, depending on how narrowly or broadly the idea of what constitutes “success” gets defined. Sales numbers (strong or weak). Awards (many or none). Marketing campaigns (or lack thereof). Efficient communication (or waiting and silence). Dropped balls leading to disaster or bolts of lightning out of the blue (hey! did I mention my friend Malinda Lo won a National Book Award last year for her excellent YA novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club? Check it out!). Writing a book you thought was your best ever and not being able to sell it while that thing you feel isn’t your best work gets the most attention. A door getting shut in your face or being opened when you least expect it.
A writer can write their book, revise it to the best of their ability, meet their deadlines and word count (I’m bad at those two and it has hurt my career). Even when they do all that, it may — or may not — matter because luck and timing are also involved. I’m not even mentioning the other elements of responsibilities and barriers beyond the writing itself, which can be many, insurmountable at some times. For example, many writers, especially those with children, suffered terrible delays in their work during the pandemic. Burnout is endemic in the field because the writer works so hard, like swimming upstream against an unforgiving current, but I have to say burnout feels bigger and more widespread now than I’ve ever seen it, not just in the field of writing and publishing but all around me.
If this sounds familiar to you, I send my best wishes. Hang in there, and I hope the burnout eases soon.
For me, writing and revising a book is challenging and also rewarding. But what burns me out is all the other stuff related to publishing, formidably most in my mind the entire business of publicity and marketing, the idea that somehow if I did just that one magic thing everyone would miraculously hear about my book and then talk about it so others could hear about it too. That if the book doesn’t do well, it was somehow absolutely all my fault because I didn’t do the one magic thing.
Feeling that you are responsible for controlling something you actually have little to no control over is a prime cause of stress and subsequent burnout. That’s one reason many writers understandly talk about their books on Twitter, on FB and Instagram, Tiktok (yes or no? should I try Tiktok?), in their newsletters and Patreons and all the other ways they try to scrape along. Some people are quite good at figuring out how best to market their work and/or their brand. Some people get a ton of publisher money, and may not even know that most writers never get that kind of push. Even getting a push guarantees nothing, although marketing dollars are better than no marketing dollars.
So this is a long way around for to tell you about a giveaway for The Keeper’s Six.
First, let me get this out of the way:
You can preorder The Keeper’s Six (January 2023) and Furious Heaven (April 2023, FINALLY).
It feels to me as if there is a lot of preorder talk and push these days. Why?
Preorders have always been a means for a publisher to gauge the interest in a forthcoming novel (and how big a print run to finally settle on when the moment comes to press the button). This is one of the reasons why writers talk about why preorders can be so helpful for a book’s success. For some of us, mentioning preorders is stressful, adding to the already significant stress of juggling all the balls to try and maintain, year in and year out, a baseline writing career. I’m not talking about a bestselling career; I don’t have one of those, but I have continuously published for over 30 years and that, in itself, is a measure of success (see above). My career could end tomorrow, or I could continue publishing until I drop dead at the age of 104 after a blameless life of good health and genial community (here’s hoping! — and of course most of this hopeful future is entirely out of my control).
Another crucial element of preorders is visibility.
A reader can only order something if they know about it. So publishers have various ways to get that information out there in the hope of reaching more eyes. Hoping for more talk and early reviews (or post publication reviews) and so on, which reach yet more eyes. And more eyes mean a greater chance of word of mouth spreading. As far as I know, word of mouth remains the best and strongest indicator of the potential of a newly published book to sell well (or for a book in the backlist to have a fresh resurgence).
So while I thank each and every one of you who has already (or who will soon) preorder (or buy after it is published) The Keeper’s Six and Furious Heaven (especially because all the early preorders of Furious Heaven were cancelled in February 2022 as if they had never existed), I also want to share:
Tordotcom’s Goodreads giveaway of The Keeper’s Six.
They’re offering 75 print ARCs, hoping to drive visibility through the existence of the giveaway (eyes) and its potential consequences (talk and reviews).
As always, I so appreciate you, all my readers, and your enthusiasm for my work. I can’t do this without you.
Audio!
The Crown of Stars audiobook rollout proceeds. Child of Flame is available and The Gathering Storm has been recorded and will be published (I’m told) on November 29, 2022 (next month!). Books six and seven should follow fairly quickly next year. I’m delighted the series is finally in audiobook form from Tantor Media (even if the covers are possibly the worst covers I’ve ever had. Oh well.)
But wait! There’s more!
Parenting is often referred to as life's greatest adventure -- but what happens when parenting happens during adventures across time, space, and magic?
While popular stories have often included parents in their plots, few are actually about the act of parenting: the joy, the grief, the anxiety, and the love that comes hand in hand with the moment-to-moment challenges of raising a child...until now.
Don't Touch That! is an anthology of stories about parents and parenting, from what to do when a wizard convinces your child to go on adventure, to the particular grief of your adult child choosing to set sail on a colony-ship, to the ways parenting intrudes even when you're summoning demons, and much more.
This wonderful project of parenting stories started life as a Kickstarter. It’s a great line up of fantastic authors.
My offering is a reprint of “When I Grow Up” — a Spiritwalker universe short story that originally appeared (briefly) over at the Book Smugglers blog as a holiday gift story (with a fantastic illustration by Kelsey Liggett. I took down the story (and, alas, the illustration) when I sold the reprint to Don’t Touch That! so it is no longer there, but you can get the story (although not the illustration) .
“When I Grow Up” is a story set some years after the end of the Cold Steel.
SPOILER: It is narrated first person by the third of Cat and Andevai’s four children, who at the time of the story is ALMOST SIX. I’ve never before written from the point of view of such a young character, and I adore her because she’s difficult and has strong emotions that she doesn’t know what to do with. END SPOILER
Which brings me to ask: I have long considered putting together a collection of the short fiction from the Spiritwalker Universe. So far I have (I believe) 11 finished stories as well as some fabulous artwork. Some of these stories are free online, some are available in ebook or print anthologies, and some are not currently obtainable (like the Beatriceid). I have 4 partially written stories I would like to finish to round out an entire related collection of stories that would begin with a story about how Tara, Daniel, Leon (later Camjiata), and Helene first meet and ending with “When I Grow Up.”
Please feel free to take this poll and/or comment below or reply to me in email.
Would you be interested if, in the near-to-medium future, I ran a Kickstarter for an ebook and a print volume of a collected Spiritwalker stories? It would include already completed illustrations by Julie Dillon and Kelsey Liggett, and as stretch goals additional illustrations by other artists to allow at least one bxw illo per story.
Finn needs a haircut.
As always, I could not do this without you. Thank you.
Kate Elliott