I’ve been writing every day now for more than twenty years. And in that span of time, I’ve constantly found myself setting lines in the sand that felt like they would prove that I had finally made it. I’d be a full-fledged author. The first one was easy: I’d need to have a published book. Something I could hold in my hand and show (or even sell!) to other people. I passed this with Cavern of Babel, but it had been written under unusual circumstances, and it felt like it had been essentially self-published, so I didn’t really count it. I mean, I didn’t feel like I’d “finally made it,” and so that must not have counted. Instead, I decided the goal was to have a book professionally published.
That happened back in 2012 with Vodnik. I had an actual honest-to-goodness editor and an agent. Surely this mean that I had finally arrived as an author. My book even had a professionally made map in the front of it! I mean, how much more real does a fantasy book get? Except . . . I still didn’t feel like I was any different than I’d been back before I was published. Vodnik wasn’t readily available in book stores. Maybe that’s what it meant to finally be a real author. If I had a book in a nationwide store, then everything would be different.
The Memory Thief came out in 2016, and it was available in every single Barnes & Noble store in the country. I could walk into any of them and sign my books. In fact, I did. And while it did feel pretty great to be able to do that, I also didn’t feel significantly changed. I was just me, not some dream author version of me (though I don’t think I’d ever really considered what that dream author version of me would be like.) So clearly that goal post wasn’t the right one. I was still missing something.
I spoke at regional conferences. I spoke at national conferences. I spoke at regional schools. I made zoom visits to schools across the country. I had more books published. I got starred reviews. I had a book optioned for a movie. My advances went up. I was an invited guest to conferences. I had people line up to have me sign books for them. I still didn’t feel like I was any different. If anything, I was like the little bird in “Are You My Mother?”, going from place to place to place, goal to goal to goal, and never really finding what I was looking for.
Most recently, I decided that to really make it as an author, you’d need to have your book appear in an airport bookstore. (Yes, I realize how outlandish my goal posts were getting. That’s kind of the point of this. Bear with me.) And then my agent sent me a picture of Death in the Dark at a bookstore in SFO. Did I feel any different? Nope. I still felt like the same old me. The same person clacking away at his keyboard.
And so I’m trying to force myself to realize that there’s no secret point where you finally pass it and everything changes. A writer writes. You can say an author is a writer who has published a novel, but as soon as you do that, you’re setting yourself up for chasing something that will likely continually be out of reach. Is it making the NYT bestseller list? Making #1? Quitting your day job? Making a million dollars?
Honestly, while those would be lovely, my experience up to now leads me to believe even getting one of those wouldn’t be enough. Because sure, you’d done it with one book (or a series of books), but what about your next book? Would you still be as successful in the future as you were before? And there’s just no way to know. Impostor syndrome will always be there, waiting to stare you back in the face each morning when you look in the mirror.
So after all those years of writing and publishing, here’s my conclusion. Hopefully you and I will both keep it in mind. In the end, it’s just you and your keyboard. Writing. And if you’re doing that day in and day out, then in my book, you’ve arrived.