Moving Forward After Publishing

Okay, so if you've been around this blog for a while, you might know my journey. For those that don't, a brief outline:

1. I signed with an agent in 2009, and my debut YA novel sold pretty quickly. Possession came out in June, 2011. I only sold one book. My agent sold the sequel in early 2011 and Surrender came out in June 2012.

2. My publisher wouldn't buy the third book in an obvious trilogy until Surrender came out and they could see how it was doing. I think this is an extremely common practice in the industry, as I've heard of it happening to other authors. But it terrified me. What if they didn't buy the third book? What would I do then? Surrender was open-ended, as most middle books in a trilogy are.

3. They ended up buying the third book in July 2012, and Abandon came out in June 2013.

4. My agent and I submitted two more books to my publisher, and they passed on both. We went wide with Elevated, and while it came close at several publishers, ultimately it did not sell.

5. I parted ways with my agent in September 2013. She's lovely, and I still recommend her to other authors. The partnership just wasn't working for me.

6. I self-published Elevated, my futuristic fantasy series, and another novel-in-verse, Something About Love in 2014.

6. I signed with a new agent in November 2013, with a time travel novel. We submitted it widely in the spring of 2014, came close, no sale.

7. This agent didn't like anything else I had in the pipeline, and we parted ways in December 2014. Since last year, I've been moving away from a YA-centric career, focusing on writing clean, contemporary romance.

8. I'm querying again, and while some authors have said it's easier the second or third time around, I'm not finding that to be the case. I still send dozens of queries. I still get lots of requests -- and many rejections.

It's hard for me to feel like a success. I have 10 titles out, and have years of experience in the social media realm. But I still feel like I'm failing.

These feelings make no sense. After all, I just received a large royalty check from the sales of Possession. So my books from 4 years ago are still selling, and I'm still earning money from them -- which means I've earned out my advance. All of that should point to "success."

Right?

Then why don't I feel successful?

I'm not sure, but I think it's because I don't have agents or editors snapping up the books I'm writing now. I don't have title after title coming out from the same publisher. There are a myriad of factors that have contributed to this, but this blog post would become a novella if I went into all of them.

Maybe I need to redefine what makes me as an author a success? Maybe I need to re-evaluate what makes a book successful? I don't know, because I don't know what those parameters are. What makes an author successful? A book, or a series?

Maybe you can help me with this.

How do you define success for yourself as an author? For your books?

No matter what, I've learned that even after you've been published, there's no yellow brick road that takes you directly to a land of wonder. I'm still wandering in unknown paths, writing books I love, and hoping there's someone out there who will love them too. I know this isn't the case for every author, but I think more of us are on this path than we know about. We feel alone, unsuccessful, but really, there's a lot of authors in the same situation.

The Other Side of Normal

Okay, so that's probably a title of major bestseller or something. I'm too lazy to go look it up. I've just been thinking a lot about what "normal" is for me.

And I've realized that I'm not very normal. At least not the way I think other normal people are.

As a writer, I think that might automatically put us all outside the sphere of normal. When I tell people that I write books, I usually get a reaction like, "What? Normal people do that?"

No, no, they do not.

Because really, who wants to torture themselves over a period of many months drafting, revising, giving your work to someone specifically for them to tell you everything that's wrong with it, revising some more, and then submitting?

It's torture! Torture, people!

And we're choosing to do it!

Why? Why do we do that?

Because we're on the other side of normal. At least that's what I've decided. Because it is not normal to want to put yourself through hard things on purpose. Most of our lives are spent trying to make things easier. Heck, I spray Rain-X on my windshield so it's easier to scrape in the winter, easier for the wipers to work, easier, easier, easier.

Most of us want to operate on the path of least resistance.

But, somehow, writing is not the path of least resistance, and we're still doing it!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we're crazy. Or that what we do is wrong, or abnormal, or anything negative. I've just been thinking about why I keep submitting my work over and over (and over) only to get those heart-wrenching emails of rejection. I must like it. Or I just operate on a different scale from normal.

I'm pretty sure I don't like it, so I'm going to go with being on the other side of normal.

What do you think? Have you ever thought about why you keep trying at this writing thing? Are you operating within the sphere of normal or on the other side?

It's kind of a party over here. We have bacon. Just sayin'.

The Dark Side of Writing

Okay, so I'm not writing this post on the weekend. It feels strange. But I spent five days in Denver, including most of my weekend. So this is what you get, I guess.

So it's Monday, and I usually spend the day cleaning and catching up and planning for the week, etc. And I've been contemplating all my projects I need to get done this week.

And holy cow. I've said this before in private emails with my besties, but dude. There is a whole other side of writing. One I didn't know about when I started writing. Ah, those blissful days spent, uh, WRITING.

See, it's dark on the other side. You grope around, trying to find your way toward this distant point of light on the horizon.

Here are a few things I've bumped into on The Dark Side of Writing:
1. Blogging
2. Twitter, facebook, forums, nings, chats
3. Answering interview questions
4. Email
5. Reading (hey, it's research)
6. Critiquing
7. Organizing cool conferences
8. Hanging at author events
9. Attending/speaking at amazing conferences
10-1000. Marketing

The thing I've noticed most is that this side of writing can completely suck your time away. It can gobble up all the writing minutes you have. I can go days doing "writing things" without writing anything.

And that's not good.

Sometimes you have to clear away the darkness, cross the line, and get back to writing. And today is that day. Who's with me??

What's on your Writing Dark Side? How do you find your way back to the flip side so you can write?

Oh, and here's a fun sample of what we did in Denver. :) (I took these with my phone--amazing.)

 Pike's Peak ↓

The Sith Lord

*cue music*

You know the kind. Darth Vader's kind.

Okay, so I went to a writing party on Friday. It was all kinds of amazing and awesome and uber-fun. And now, apparently, I'm the Sith Lord. I've been luring writers to the dark side for months now.

Who knew?

And just what is the dark side? Paranormal. Yeah, I luvz it. So I guess I've been "encouraging" my contemporary writerly friends that they should write paranormal.

And now I've decided to go contemporary. I can't remember who it was that said I was "enticing" the competition to my side just so I could run a coup on contemporary.

But I'll find out. Oh, yes. The Force is strong with me. I'll find out.

*/end music*

So the party was awesomesauce. We sat around and talked about what we write. So, dear friends, what do you write and why? What genres do you find yourself gravitating toward? What's easy? What's harder?

And do you think I'd look good in a hood? (lol!)