Hopes and Fears—The Backlist

Or, Good Problems are Still Problems

I figure one of the more useful things I can do on this blog as a writer with a first book recently out is to document some of the ups and downs of the process and try to make sense out of them for the folks coming up who will soon be where I am. This means talking about the good, the bad, and the terrifying. That said, I know that I'm very lucky to have gotten this far, and I'm frankly thrilled to have these issues to deal with.

Right now I have 1 book in print and 1 revised and forthcoming. I have 4 complete stand alone novels out with publishers, including 2 on my editor's desk at Ace. I have 2 proposals out. All of these are contemporary fantasy. I also have 1 complete contemporary YA fantasy book out that is intended as the first of a series of 4. It is a stand-alone, but has an attached proposal for 3 follow-ups. The novel I'm working on now is an alternate-WWII YA fantasy, very dark and the first of 3, though also a stand-alone. I'm hoping to have it finished along with proposals for the 2 follow-ups by the beginning of the year. And I have 2 trunk novels, 1 mostly rewritten to current standards and awaiting a final polish to go out the door.

My biggest professional hope for all these books is that they will be picked up as soon as possible. It's also one of my biggest terrors. The hopeful side of the equation doesn't need much explanation, the reasons are pretty obvious to anyone who's writing with the intent to publish. The fear side is more interesting. Say, just for a moment that by massive coincidence and equally massive luck, the lot sold tomorrow. What would I do? Well, first I'd throw a serious blow-out party. Then. . .I'd panic.

Here's why: None of these books would be ready for print as is. That just doesn't happen. That means I'd have revisions of varying levels of significance to do for 7 novels with workloads varying from a minimum of a solid 50 hours up to as much as a 3 months per book. I would have to complete the current half-finished book, 1-3 months solid work (YAs are short). I would have 7 new books to complete that have not yet gone beyond the outline stage, anywhere from 2 1/2 to 4 years of writing. All together I would be committed to a minimum of 3 years of intense work and as much as 6 years. All of that without writing another short story or entertaining a single new idea.

As I mentioned below, I've been at this for 16 years so far, so it's not the idea of committing to more years of writing that's scary, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. But this would all have deadlines attached, and it would pretty much lock me down on exactly what I was going to do. I would no longer be able to chase the next pretty shiny idea that came by to see where it goes. There is a freedom to being unpublished or underpublished that doesn't seem all that valuable until you see the possibility of it fading away. Dean Smith warned me about this a couple of years ago and, while I took the warning seriously and intellectually understood it, I'm only now coming to emotional grips with it. Does that mean I wouldn't leap at getting everything picked up tomorrow? Of course, not. It just means I have a different perspective on the idea than I would have had before I sold WebMage.

I have more to say on the subject, but it'll have to wait, as this is already too long. So, for the moment, I'll end with a question.

If you knew that soon, and for years to come, you might no longer have choices about what to write, what would you want to write before that happened?