Moonlighting

This is an article I wrote for our newsletter at work. X asked me about it, so I thought I'd share it here just for humor. Oh - name changed to protect privacy, of course.


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Almost all of us give ourselves an unpaid job of some sort, more avocation than vocation. We pour ourselves into gardening, mechanics or building, extracurricular activities, games or hobbies. People seem to thrive with a creative outlet requiring investment and discipline, which provides the kind of reward a paycheck doesn’t carry. Some of us take it far enough to hope it might produce paychecks of its own. And New Year’s—be that January 1, or the Chinese new year, or some period of renewal that has meaning beyond the calendar—is often a time we choose to rededicate ourselves to these pursuits.

I’m an author. Many of you have heard me mention it; what few people really know is how serious a professional one has to be—even unpaid—to make writing a “working” pursuit. During a three month layoff in 2010, this was my day job, after I spent mornings going through the twenty-three job sources I searched every single day of the week. The writing work actually took up more time than the job search, because that search was a cut-and-dried process (the sort of thing a good admin should be able to get down pat without a lot of trial and error—ahem). The business of writing can make mere unemployment look like a piece of cake!

Step one: I authored a novel. It was completed on February 28, 2010, and had taken me four and a half years to finish. During this time, my membership in the local literary community, James River Writers, provided me an education on how to proceed beyond the creative part. The first thing to learn, as an aspiring author, is that you can’t sell a product that isn’t off the assembly line. If I don’t have something to sell, they don’t have something to sell, and there are probably anywhere from fifty to two hundred authors every single day querying them with completed works. Why would an “idea” take precedence over that much available material? I had to finish.

Step one, subsection A: confidence. Knowing my work is a product, I consider its quality with a critical eye. During the process, and afterward too, the novel is not my precious baby, and I look forward to advice on how it can be better, from people who know. I’m willing to stand behind it, in front of it, talk about it, be confident in it and in myself as its shepherd. Moreover, I’m as much a product as the book. The response rate I get in-person with agents and editors is very high—which is as important as the fact that the story is compelling; if they want to listen to me, it’s because they think others might, as well. And the ultimate goal of a published author is to sell and be sold. Realistically, the goal might not be to become David “Daddy signs books for a living” Baldacci successful (my boss knows he’ll have to forcibly evict me from my job with **** to part me from it!)—but it isn’t to have an unpublished manuscript sitting around all by itself either. And this brings us to …

Step two: getting agented. People ask me every so often, “Is the book published yet?” and look disappointed in me when I say, gracious, I haven’t even got representation yet. It can take years to get the right agent, and as much longer for them to sell it to a publisher. You have to expect to query a hundred agents—two hundred—as many as it takes. I’m entering my transatlantic queries at this point; reaching out to those who handle my genre in the U.K. You have to research agents’ catalogues and “show your work” on that point to make yourself relevant and attractive. You have to approach EVERY contact individually, personally, just as with job hunting. An email blast of cold queries is a doomed waste of the minimum effort it shows. It’s an enormous, demanding, pain in the, er, elbow, and some days you want to kick a puppy—or just an agent or two. And all these things … while having a full time job … and trying to make progress on a second novel. In the best of circumstances, querying is a lengthy process. Precious few authors are blessed with those circumstances.

If I am published within three years of completion, that would be wonderful and amazing; and one year is almost gone already. The fantasy of it happening even sooner would be perfectly spectacular. That I will not be published is not among my expectations (see also: step one, subsection A). I just look forward to step three, the publishing, and seeing my work go out into the world. And then the second. And then the third …

The beginning of a new year is not only a moment when we rededicate ourselves to whatever matters most, it’s also when we reflect on time and its passing. As an author, I’ve learned the greatest investment and discipline of my work has to be time. This isn’t a pursuit for the impatient; if someone isn’t spontaneously famous and hiring a ghost to write about why that is (“my six-minute marriage to Britney” or “how I said I was a terrible, drug-addled criminal and turned out to be a liar on Oprah”), no book ever hits the shelves in a hurry. The idea that trends have a persuasive place in publishing isn’t one worth attempting to control—or to follow. Harry Potter was an accident—and, many forget, a huge surprise to everyone at the time. The market can’t be timed, and the goal can’t be raced-to.

Some things in life refuse to hurry, and some go by too quickly. Maybe in a way, those pursuits we assign ourselves are most important to us because they stay with us for a long time, they make up who we are, not merely what we do. We keep our unpaid jobs even when the paying ones change over time; when one phase moves to another, or when one project ends, or when a team has to shift and reconfigure in some new way. Some things may not happen quickly, or produce easy yields, but we don’t lose our dedication, because gratification isn’t always about this month’s calendar. Some paychecks don’t direct-deposit in the most straightforward way.