Singin’ the midlist blues
Perhaps it’s just that I’ve been down with a majestic case of con crud for the last few days, and my positive vibes are finding it hard to cope with my cotton-wool-and-swiss-cheese brain right now. But for a while now I’ve been in something of a state, and that’s got nothing to do with whether or not I can stop hacking any time soon or unblock my sinuses.
You see, for the first time in something like five years… I’m without a contract in the pocket.
Over the last, oh, eight years or so - pretty near the duration of my full-time writing career - I’ve had a good-to-damned-brilliant contract in my pocket for all the books that came out in that time period. Working backwards, the Worldweavers trilogy was sold on the basis of a synopsis ALONE, for a good and decent sum of money even given that it was three books’ worth of contract - but the last of that money was paid out to me in February, and the last book is in its copy edit instar on my desk right now, and pretty soon these books are going to be part of my personal publishing history. Before that, I sold “Embers of Heaven” on the strength of a synopsis, for a REALLY good sum of money (given that the contract was in pounds sterling and I live in a country where those are worth practically twice whats written on the contract in terms of cyphers alone). Before that, the various foreign editions of “The Secrets of Jin Shei” basically kept on popping into the hopper - we’re up to twelve languages and counting now, and all of those brought in good-to-middling amounts of money (more often than not in Euros) trickling into my account. You might say that I wrote “Jin shei” itself on spec initially, as it were, but that spec was only at the beginning - it helped me to get a fantastic agent who then did all the rest while I sat back without worrying and wrote the book. It was the agent who re-sold the “Changer of days” books (”The Hidden Queen” and “Changer of Days” in the USA) during this period, too - if you want to run down the actual chronology it was 2001 and 2002 for the initial NZ editions of “Changer”, 2004 for the US hardcover edition of “Jin Shei” followed by the other foreign editions straggling over the years including the UK/Aussie/NZ edition, and the Spanish incarnations which are still ongoing with a pocket edition due this year. Then 2005 for US paperback of “Jin Shei” and the fantasy duology in the US. Then 2006 for the UK release of “Embers”. Then 2007 for Worldweavers #1, 2008 for Worldweavers #2 (”Spellspam”, released just a few weeks ago) and 2009 for Worldweavers #3, “Cybermage”.
Good run, eh? Any soul out of there will tell me to go away and quit whining. How many people get this blessed?…
The thing is… I did not do a Rowling, or a King, or a Dan Brown. I sell thousands of books, tens of thousands of books, maybe hundreds of thousands of books when all is totted up - but I did not “break out”, I did not hit millions or get on Oprah or hit the New York Times lists. I did not prove myself to the bean counters. And I have a lot of stories left to tell… but it is the bean counters who get to decide whether I will get to tell them, because I may now be in a position worse than any dewy-eyed newbie who walks through the doors. I am a writer with a record. And if my record is judged wanting, it will no longer matter that I have stories left to tell or that I can tell them well. I am midlist, and I am left singing the midlist blues.
I am writing another novel right now. Of course I am - I cannot quit, any more than I can decide to survive without a heartbeat from now on. But I am writing it because I am writing it and not because someone has expressed a willingness to buy the thing from me. I’ve just come back from a con and I’ve heard people tell me that somebody has just recommended me to them - the words “Alma Alexander? Oh, I LOVE her stuff!” have been reported to have been uttered. And I am happy beyond words to have knowledge of their being uttered, because writing is - always has been - a joy to me, and knowing a story of mine has brought a degree of joy or happiness or enjoyment to somebody else is a big thing. But I need to sell a thousand books in a week now, just to get past the hurdle of an editor’s implication that she liked a synopsis of mine but she’s waiting to hear from the marketing people… because there’s a track record. I may be faced with changing the name I write under. I may be forced to start all over again. I may be forced to start winning that “I love her stuff” reaction from people all over again from scratch.
And that’s if I’m lucky.
Eh, maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself because I still can’t quite breathe without stopping to hack, and I haven’t been outside in days, and it’s been snowing for two days out here at the tail end of March with my blooming daffodils bowed underneath the weight of the snow. Maybe my optimism is under that snow somewhere too, having bloomed early like the daffodils and now staggering under an unexpected load of reality. But I honestly thought that being published would make things EASIER for me, not harder. Maybe I was just being naive.
I’ll go back to my chores now. I have a copy edit to finish, that of the third book in the trilogy, and I might even get it in by the deadline that I promised it by despite being sick at the worst possible time. I’ll go back to the new novel, and keep writing it, and try and keep up the hope that somehow somewhere there will be a good home for it when I am done. In the meantime… if you feel generous and are in need of something to read for yourself or for a reader in your life… please consider making my publishers’ bean counters happier. My books are still in print.
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Comments
Eh, I’ve always believed in writing for its own sake. It isn’t anything that I’ve recently discovered. But I guess that years of being “Safe” and under contract for every word that actually comes out is kind of… addictive. I’ll always be writing. I just have to hope that the stuff I write will continue to be published…
Wasn’t it Katherine Hepburn - Can’t remember which Shakespearean thing she was playing in, but she was (I believe) a queen. All I remember is the quote, that has stuck with me.
She was on the ground, having been whacked by one of her sons…things were in a shambles, all was about to fall apart…and she looks up almost calmly and says, tears streaming down her face..
“But what family doesn’t have it’s ups, and downs?”
I’ve been to the point where my career appeared to have dried up like a prune (particularly novel wise…it’s on the upswing again, and the only key to it was persistence, figuring out things to shift and change, and plowing on.
Sorry you aren’t feeling better. Just got past four and a half weeks with varying degrees of use of my throat / nose / voice. I find, now, that I can sing again…there might be a message in that.
DNW
Alma,
Most interesting essay. Thank you for illuminating, from a personal perspective, yet another snag in a writers path to success. It must be extremely frustrating to find oneself being held back by midlist success from an even greater success when the path from the former to the latter should ideally be a smoothly inclining one. I hope your present literary effort will boost you over the hump.
There is hope for surviving your present hacking problem. It took its good old time; but, in my recent encounter with it, it graaaaadually receded in intensity.
Dave - The movie you mentioned is probably THE LION IN WINTER, starring Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole as King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, respectively. I think it also starred Anthony Hopkins as one of their three sons. As I recall, Henry and Eleanor had just had a screaming fight that peaked when Eleanor again taunted Henry about who had actually fathered her son???. With that, Henry had screamed even louder and stormed out down a passageway, banging huge doors along the way. It was at that point, I believe, where she uttered the words that I too have remembered, about every family having its little “ups and downs.”
RCJ
Alma, I was in that same place last year, debating a name change, a career change, a diaper change. I was just tired of all the bean counter crap. But, alas, it’s a business and no one cares about your tears unless there are silver dollars spilling from your eyes. So, I kept writing.
I was depressed. I sulked.
I kept writing.
I vented. I withdrew.
I kept writing.
And–this last year has been the most productive ever. So I guess the moral of the story is what you already know…
damn, sorry you’re feeling a little blue and I hope things look up for you in a few months or so.
I suppose everyone likes to allow themselves to feel that somehow, just one step is going to do it, guarantee that career. No matter how many times people say, nope.
Every step up brings a whole new world of trouble and headaches.
Ah, but I’m sure you’ll be fine, chin up:)
[...] be successful, they’re not quite successful enough. In her storytellersunplugged piece “Singin’ the midlist blues,” author Alma Alexander describes her unexpectedly precarious career status in the wake of a [...]
I’m betting your editor’s eyes are green, as in green light, and she’s waiting on marketing in order to decide how many beans to offer you. But if you’ve discovered writing for its own sake in the lapse, you’ve already been rewarded with the most important thing a muse can whisper in your ear. Write on!
– Sully