Hopes and Fears II

I said here that I would return to some of the things I've been thinking about after making the big breakthrough of selling my first book. So, here we are. Let me begin again with the caveat that I'm truly delighted to be where I am in my career. I have one book out that is doing well so far, one forthcoming, and five under consideration along with five proposals.

Further sales: In some ways the place you're at after selling the first book is just a matter of same game bigger stakes since you have to sell the next one now to prove the last one wasn't a fluke. I've been here before, more than once. It happened after I sold my first short story, and again when I hit the pro mark at three professional sales but still hadn't sold a novel. The order of difficulty you have in selling your work looks something like this going from hardest to easiest : 1st novel contract (1 or more books), 1st short story sale, 2nd novel contract, 3rd novel contract, 2nd story sale, further novel contracts, further story sales. No matter where you are in your career, making the next jump is always a worry. Especially since you're only as valuable as your last book's sales and only as interesting as the quality of the next one.

Writing to contract: I think this one is scary for most writers. You had however long it took to write the book that landed you a contract. Maybe you even wrote an entire trilogy that way and sold the lot. Now, you've got a contract for a book that isn't yet written and a bright shiny deadline. You may or may not have an outline, and you may or may not have ever written from an outline before. In my case I had a contract that specified a sequel to the first one. No title, no outline, nothing but the word sequel. That blank page can be scary. As of last month, mine's done, and in, and accepted, and that's a huge relief. For me this was less scary than for many because I'd already completed eight novel when I hit that blank page, but even so I had a few moments of panic.

Empty cupboard: Running out of books/stories/ideas. Which of these aflicts you will differ with your production. In my case, ideas are not a problem. If I stopped having them tomorrow, I'd still have enough plot outlines and story ideas tucked away to see me through quite a number of years of high production without any worries. But I know at least a couple of writers who tend to get one big idea at a time and then write it. They are always worried about whether or not there'll be another idea ready when they need to write the next book or proposal. That's very scary. I also know writers who've sold everything they've written. On one level you have to think cool! But at the same time there's suddenly a lot more pressure because now you're relying solely on future production to fill the pipeline. I'm not there yet, not even close, but I find the idea more than a little frightening. Knowing that I've got several older books around that I can send out is enormously reassuring. It means that if I have a huge family crises that slows or stops my production for a time, I'm not without a fallback plan.

Again, I've gone long without talking about all the things I wanted to talk about. Sigh. I guess I'll end here and get into overpublishing, pen names, and competing with yourself next time around.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this. So was this; A, useful information? B, silly writer angst? C, something else entirely? D, a large wombat?