THE END is Just the Beginning
Get Ready for Some Sports Metaphors
Hi Friends,
I am the kind of person who needs to know where the goalposts are. Oh, we’re going for a run? I need to know if it’s 1 mile or 6. Let’s go see a movie! Great, what’s the run time? How many pages is this book? How long is going to take us to get there? What’s the next step in the recipe? Maybe this is normal or maybe it’s a trauma response ¯\_(ツ)_/¯but regardless, when I am anxious, it is usually related to me not being aware or understanding the next step, the ultimate goal, the aim.
Luckily, I am ok when those steps, goals, and aims change! I am truly thankful for this part of my personality and am doing all I can to impart it to my six-year-old, lol. Change happens! Change is good! Change is inevitable.
How does this apply to writing and publishing? If you are feeling anxious, uncertain, lost, adrift in the morass that is the process of writing and publishing a book, I have two suggestions.
Redefine Your Goalposts
Accept That They Will Change.
When we start writing, a book all we can think about is being done with it. Writing THE END and then immediately getting an agent, a big deal, and hitting the NYT bestseller list. (Be honest. You’ve had this fantasy. We all have.) But THE END is just the beginning.
When you finish writing your book, congratulate yourself! It’s hard! Way more people start books then finish them! (Me included!) But it is not THE END, or, it is the end of just one part of the process. If you can think of it this way, you can prepare yourself for the next challenge—revisions!!—with more energy and resolve. Because when we get to THE END and we really think it’s the end, and then discover there’s a lottttttttttt more to go, it’s demoralizing and depressing and even harder to keep going.
You’re like, Kate! I know that just typing THE END in my manuscript is not the end of my publishing road! Do you think I was born yesterday??? And yeah, I know. But think about it. Did you really internalize THE END as just the beginning? Or did it loom so large in your psyche that you could hardly see around it, and then when you got there you were startled to realize just how much farther there was to go? Or was that just me?
(I’m sorry to my SFF friends who can see there are much better LOTR and hero’s journey metaphors here than football and goalposts but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. You can put your goalposts in Mordor or whatever if it helps you more.)
When you finish your manuscript, the next goalpost is editing. When you finish editing, the next goalpost is querying. If you get an agent, the next goalpost is more editing. When you’re done editing again, the next goalpost is submitting it to editors. If you get an offer, the next goalpost is more editing (lol). When you’re done editing, the next goalpost is publication! When your book comes out (and likely before) the next goalpost is….another book.
If your career works out as straightforward as the above trajectory, consider yourself lucky. At every goalpost, it could change. If you don’t get an agent, the next goalpost might be more queries, or writing another book, or self-publishing. If your agent can’t sell your book, the next goalpost might be more submissions or writing another book. When your book comes out, if it’s not the success everyone hopes it to be, the next goalpost might be not your planned sequel, but another book entirely, or maybe even another genre. (Or maybe that genre move comes two or three books down the line.) See? The goalposts can change. Getting the ball through the uprights1 doesn't mean each step after that is going to be just as effortless. I'm sorry! I know that this kind of talk is dispiriting to some writers, and I totally get it. But for others of you, like me, knowing it's hard and maybe just how hard actually makes it easier in a small, small way. I’m managing my own expectations. Maybe you can, too.
Keep writing, my friends. I hope all your books are a big sportsball goal.
XOXOXOX,
Kate
Synonym for goalposts
Haha! Loved this whole thing (including your mixed metaphors and first-draft typos--keeping it real!). This is one of the primary reasons I try to knock out my first drafts PDQ. After you get a couple of published books behind you, you start to understand where the real bulk of the work is. Yes, writing the first draft is hard work. But it can become the shortest part of the process, as it has for me. Revisions, in my opinion, take the longest, particularly if you use an editor. There is a lot of back and forth and rewriting (and deleting *sigh*). (Caveat: Beta Readers can also take a lot of time, but the writer is usually working on the next project until the readers respond.) Anyway, the truth is that writing is a marathon (even though we use sprints to get our drafts done!). YMMV, but in my experience the process is never-ending until you decide you won't write another thing ever again (and actually follow through with that decision *grin*).
your reminders/wisdom always seem to arrive exactly as needed. Thank you, Kate!