Fear of commitment: A defense

I’m going to give you some writing advice untainted by anything anyone could call “success” in the industry:

Don’t start off with a series.

This goes against what, e.g. the Alliance of Independent Authors will tell you, and they have a very solid argument: A series is the best way to monetize an audience. A fan of Book 1 in a series is likelier to read Book 2 than a fan of standalone Book A is to read unrelated Book B.

I don’t think this is incorrect. (OK actually, as a newish horror reader who eagerly follows, e.g., Stephen Graham Jones and Paul Tremblay from stand-alone to stand-alone, I’m starting to suspect it might be.) But I think it might be a case of confusing “be ready for success,” which you should do, with “bank on success,” which you shouldn’t.

If you’re not writing full-time—and as an early-career novelist, unless you have a sugar parent of some kind, you aren’t—you may be writing pretty slowly. One book a year, or slower—maybe you’re writing in a long genre, maybe you have kids or other obligations eating up your time off, maybe you’re a naturally slow writer. (By “you might be,” please understand that I additionally mean “I am.”) The trilogy that another author might be able to put out in a year could take you four or five.

Writing more slowly means a bunch of things in the context of a series, but I think the most important thing it means is: If your books don’t land, you’re committed to spending four or five years on a project that doesn’t land. When you could have spent that time writing different books that, maybe, would. A series is the best way to monetize an audience, but that requires an audience. Book 3 can only cash the checks that Book 1 can write.

And early-career you might not have the idea that writes the big checks! Early-career you is the least knowledgeable, least capable you. Paul Graham talks about the peril faced by people who know exactly what they want from life early, namely that they end up with a career chosen for them by an 18-year-old. (Or I could have sworn that was him; I can’t find the essay where he says it.) You’re always going to be a better writer later, of course, but maybe the time to make a big commitment isn’t when you know the actual least.

This is obviously a distillation of my own regrets. I actually started off trying to write a stand-alone book… and ended up, after a really long time at it, deciding to revise the first half to publication quality and publish it as the first half of a duology. I did—it’s called The Dandelion Knight, and you can read it!—but instead of finishing the second half, I started another series, hoping I might get an agent with it. The Eighth King got picked up by a small press called Curiosity Quills, and you can’t read it, because they exploded in a puff of blockchain circa 2018 and I haven’t republished it yet. While I was waiting to get the rights to The Eighth King back, I started Brimstone Slipstream, because I thought it would be a quick trilogy of like 60,000-word novels, and now I’m two 120K-novels in with an extra book planned, and…

… well, other than the sequel to The Eighth King that I wrote over the course of maybe 3 years after it got picked up, that’s my noveling history over the last 17 years. (Oh, and the fantasy Western that I actually did write in like 5 months… another fucking series starter.) In another 17 years, I’ll be 61. Not gonna lie, I’m feeling some pressure to use them better!

So. I don’t really mean “don’t write a series.” What I really mean is, do what you want, and finish what you start.

Something I’m realizing, though, is: Maybe it’s not such a good idea for me to keep The Eighth King and The Gale-Razed Rose in the trunk until I’m done with Streets of Flame. TEK has already had a professional edit, and every time I read TGRR it feels like the highest-quality first draft I’ve ever written. Publishing Heatstroke Heartbeat is absolutely my first priority until it’s done… but if I’m going to say in public that it’s smart not to pin your hopes on one series, maybe I should act like it?

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Currently reading: Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, by Molly McGhee.