Things I Hate to Admit to Myself

There’s nothing that turns me off of a keynote speech at any gathering of writers – be it conferences, workshops, retreats, whatever – more than when the speaker starts out by telling you how impossible it is for you to become a successful writer. When they say that less than 1% of all books submitted get published, and fewer still make any profit, and yet fewer still become best sellers and launch an author’s career. Or when they point out such cold hard facts as: it takes sales of 500-1000 books in the first few days of release to even get on most book-lists’ radar. I could go on, but I’m guessing you hate these statistics as much as I do.

I finally sat down the other day and asked myself a very hard question: Why? Why do I hate such statistics? They are facts, after all, facts based on very real hard data, and as such they are inescapable. Resenting a fact is like hating a peach pit – you can go on hating it all you want, but every peach you eat is still going to have a pit, no matter how much you hate it. You can have someone remove the pit for you before you eat it, but this is only hiding the pit from you, not changing the fact that every peach has a pit. (Those of you who read last month’s post may well wonder what’s with this author’s obsession with fruit. Well, mind your own business.)

We can hide from facts all we want, but that doesn’t make them any less implacably true.

But I still hate these publishing statistics. And after some self-examination I know why, and why you do, too. Such statistics are like the bully who joins a pickup game of stick ball only to hit the ball over the fence and across the highway where no one can retrieve it. They are the arrogant young punk who gets on the light rail train with death metal music booming out of a portable speaker. They are the one spoiled shrimp in an otherwise delightful shrimp cocktail that makes you sick all night. They are…well you get the idea. They are spoil sports, the thorn in your side, the burning vomit that comes out of your nose as well as throat.

We hate these statistics because they ruin our fun. The fun is writing, and having others read our stories. We have been conditioned to think that we are failures if we don’t have thousands and thousands of readers, and more often than not it interferes with our ability to continue writing. But is that really true? While we may dream of that, how many of us, realistically, expect to make an independent living on our writing these days? Even writers you consider quite successful continued to work other more conventional jobs during the height of their success. And many others who didn’t could hardly have been called wealthy or even well off. Many more died in obscurity.

My point is, why let these statistics and reality spoil the fun? Most of us who started writing didn’t do it to become wealthy (and I submit, as has been said many times on this blog, that if you did you’re in the wrong business.) Most of us got into writing because we had stories to tell, we love telling stories, and we can’t stop. There is nothing wrong with tracking your sales and aspiring to stardom, but for God’s sake don’t let lagging figures and disappointing ciphers on a page beat up on your muse. It isn’t her fault readers are a fickle lot, and there’s no telling what may grab their fancy at any given time. Compartmentalize your business aspirations – thousands upon thousands of sales – from the fun you have when you write. I promise you, even if you die tearing tickets at a theater, or pushing rocks with your backhoe, or building submarine sandwiches for hungry briefcase warriors, or even if you’re one of those warriors yourself, you’ll never regret the stories you told when you could, even if only a small circle of close friends and colleagues were your audience.