I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, But it Feels Like I’m Doing it Write?

Wherein the author makes a statement that is either a bold stand against grind core ambitions or a whiny tantrum against reader expectations.

Stephen King writes two books a year.

That’s it. That’s the point.

Last year I read over 100 books. It might’ve been more than that, because I honestly don’t keep an accurate count, and I discovered LitRPG around August and proceeded to devour (and finish) several series’ over the last 4 months of the year. Some of which were over 7 books deep and I read some books in the series multiple times.

Regardless of whether you’re a fan of the LitRPG genre or not, you should read this book

I’m a voracious reader. You’re on Substack, so you probably are too. That’s the point.

And because of these first two points I have struggled with the fact that my debut novel, Order Status: Missing, which took about year to get a workable draft, is not the kind of writing that I can easily replicate. Rinse & repeat. More more more.

It’s coming, I swear. Probably in the summer because I have to do almost everything and still work to feed myself.

I don’t care how many books James Patterson writes — I don’t read James Patterson. That’s my point.

This is also something I see in the aforementioned LitRPG world. Some are calling it Deliberate Practice. Where people push through bad writing because they owe pages to their readership. Either via serial story sites like Royal Road, or subscription based platforms like Patreon or our own beloved Substack. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You can’t wait for the muse to show up, you have to write anyway.”

Yeah, I don’t know, man. To me that sounds like giving yourself an excuse to write shit.

Of course the truth is often in the middle. Writer’s Block (or paralysis) is a thing, which breeds procrastination. You can toss a rock and hit a writer with ADHD, and you’re probably reading this article on the world’s most accessible (and acceptable) crack pipe, your phone. Point being: there’s plenty of troubled seas that could see you waylaid from the muse, your pages blank and unfulfilled.

Forget it, muse. It’s procrastination.

But that’s not always a bad thing.

My writing is highly autobiographical, despite the fact that my novel revolves around my main character, Cab Jaurek, riding around in 1987 El Camino with A.C., his best friend-in-law — aka his ex-wife’s new girlfriend — solving a mystery between DoorDash deliveries while uncovering the underbelly of outlaw country, West Virginia. However, *I* drive 2017 Chevy Malibu. But my point, to make a long-winded diatribe even longer, was that sometimes shit needed to happen to me before I could write it down.

And when I wasn’t writing? I was freaking out, because the process is precious. It is very possible to simply lose a novel, just fall out of it — whoops, where’d it go? — and there’s nothing you can do but toss the efforts in a drawer and hope it comes back.

This is why we exhibit tomes and articles stressing 90 day novels and break-time writing sessions. And why every year the whole of November is dedicated — at least in spirit, if no longer officially — to the practice of vomiting 50,000 words in a month. Countless novelist hopefuls hyping themselves up so that they can finally accomplish the dream of writing the book that’s in their heart. Most don’t make it.

And you know why? Because it’s fucking insane.

Live footage of an author attempting to write multiple books at the same time

Let’s be honest. Despite outliers like the aforementioned Mr. Patterson and LitRPG folk (because they’re serving an audience unfed by traditional publishing), I don’t see a lot of longevity with those of my colleagues with an "every few months" output. Those who wrote 11 books about the esoteric amateur sleuth who keeps solving cozy murder mysteries every time they go on vacation (flimsy premises being a staple of the genre be damned, I can't put myself comfortably in the shoes of a character best served by staying their ass at home). If you try and track these authors down, most have burnt out.

And it's not a mystery why.

I get that we’re trying to rise above the noise, plus it’s very easy to be drowned out by algorithms and their bot henchmen, but the solution isn't becoming a personal assembly line. Self-publishing was supposed to set us free from the lack of imagination in trad-pub marketing, which leads to dilution of art — at best — along with glacial release scheduling that amounts to wage slavery royalties. Instead, we adopted a corporate work ethic, more focused on creating a come-what-may catalog of crap in hopes that enough will consume to justify the effort.

And here we arrive at the point.

My hero, my mental mentor, Mr. Stephen King, writes two books a year. And, best case scenario, wherein my salary comes, primarily, from schilling my collected words, and not from maintaining a podcast or YouTube channel alongside (once again, another space where “authors” make a living shotgunning content to stave off the literary conveyor-belt alternative). If my total focus was purely upon cultivating the written word? I might be able to see myself reasonably squeezing out two books a year. Ones that I wouldn’t be ashamed to release, that is. That were given time to properly cook — Jesus Christ there’s so much you learn about a book after it’s written. You need time to let shit sit & simmer.

So here I plant my feet, against both assembly line whimsy, and character longevity for sake of a series. Janet Evanovich has over 30 novels in her Stephanie Plum series while Nelson DeMille has only 9 in his John Corey series. The difference between them is that one author seems willing pawn off the character that made them a bestselling author to other authors, while the other seems to come back to that particular well when they have something to say. And while bills gotta get paid, and one person’s artistic license is another person’s luxury, I’d still rather aim for the latter, rather than the former.

I love this series and this character so much

Not to mention that there’s a ton of great writers out there, both independent and traditionally published, and we should be encouraging people to send their readership towards our brethren rather than try to suck up all the air in the room. And if you’ve written works of substance, their narrative dalliances with other authors and genres shouldn’t prevent them from both coming back or promoting you to other readers.

And with all of this, isn’t that the entire point?