It turns out that writing (essentially) promotional content on a freelance basis for other people’s blogs every day is not conducive to working on original fiction.
Take a moment to laugh at how obvious that is. It’s okay, I deserve it.
The hope, when I set out to live in Canada, was that freelance writing would free me up a bit. I would be able to work shorter hours and earn about the same; I would be able to use that extra time to focus on creative work. It was, I thought, the perfect compromise. Even my mother, when I ran some hypothetical budgets past her before leaving England, asked me why I’d never thought of doing this before.
Now I have the answer. It’s because I didn’t know the value of what I had before: a clear and unequivocal (well, mostly; I did occasionally steal some time for my novel at work) separation between ‘money work’ and ‘writing work.’ I didn’t have to use my creative brain at all during the day, so I could come home and apply it at full force in the evenings. Sure, it meant I wasn’t really getting ‘downtime’ per se; but at least writing felt joyful under these conditions. It was the thing I looked forward to doing when I was done paying my stupid, awful bills.
As a freelance writer, there’s no way around it: I have to use that creative energy differently. And at the minute, balancing three clients so I can save enough for travel and moving and all that jazz, the hours simply don’t align in my favour. I get done writing a blog post and I immediately want to turn my brain off with an episode of television. That’s never really happened before.
This past week, I’ve been with friends in Toronto for an ad-hoc writing retreat. I did more work on my book (not the one that’s still on submission! more on that very soon!) in six hours on a Saturday than I had managed in the six preceding months. But I had to scramble to get a week of work done in the three days leading up to everyone arriving. There is always a trade-off. I am increasingly tired of them, speaking honestly.
Writing is hard. You know what’s harder? Publishing.
I am sure I’ve complained about this before: writers don’t really talk about the logistics of the industry. I don’t fully understand why. It undermines the mythology of writing, sure; but the mythology of writing is kind of bullshit anyway, and could stand to be very gently kneecapped. Maybe people think it is gauche to talk about success; maybe nobody wants to call attention to their failures. Probably it’s just a matter of everyone cringing neatly away from the money of it all, which, you know, fair. I don’t enjoy money either.1
But the fact remains that the industry is awful, and I think more people should know this before they hang their dreams on its very precarious hook. I could get into the ongoing diversity problems at the marketing and acquisition level, which means that marginalised authors still struggle to get traction much of the time; or the undervaluing of both authorial and editorial labour; or the way an overlarge advance can absolutely fuck your future earning potential when you inevitably don’t earn out. But that’s probably a book, and given the vested interests at work, nobody would publish it.
What is weighing on me lately, and the subject of this lament, is that nothing in publishing means a goddamn thing. Isaac’s upcoming novel was just acquired after a year on submission, right after he’d given up on it; as far as we can tell, this happened primarily because the editor who bought it got promoted, so no longer had to get past the boss who had previously told him he couldn’t take on the book. Meanwhile, another friend (a dear friend and an exceptionally talented writer, whose fortunes I celebrate) earned six large figures at auction within days of going on submission, and is now weighing eight bids from production companies offering quit-your-job money for the chance to adapt her debut.
And me? I’m languishing at six months out on sub, and I haven’t heard anything at all in four. We had two early rejections; as far as I know, my book is still with ten editors. The last I heard from my agent about this was at the very tail end of 2022, when she said, essentially, ‘nothing yet; I’ll keep pushing’.
Friends in the industry report that everything is still hellishly backed up post-Covid. At this point, I’m clinging to that, because having failed to even make it to submission with the book my agent signed me on, I genuinely don’t know what I will do if this one doesn’t sell. (My dignity obliges me to append a half-hearted ‘lmao.’)
If you’re asking yourself how hard it is to write in these conditions… very! The answer is ‘very.’ After the first rejection, my work on the sequel ground to a halt about 5,000 words in. The silence is almost worse. At least if the ‘no’ were definitive, I would be able to think about alternative plans instead.
I hear a lot from other writers about the existential horror that comes with success. The thing is that when you succeed—at risk of sounding redundant—then you’ve succeeded. You get to have that, too. When you’re failing, all you get is the horror; I know which one I would choose, if it were only a matter of choice.
I say ‘failing,’ present participle, because I don’t think I have definitively failed. Like I said, it would almost be easier to have things feel final in that way. But success feels very distant, and I don’t know what to do. At this stage, so much of it is out of my hands; I am reliant on my agent to Keep Pushing, on editors to keep reading, on whoever makes the calls in acquisitions to show a crumb of mercy. And I am not under any illusions here. I have no reason to believe that I am literally anyone’s priority.
All of this to say that it’s hard, and I can only try so hard with the resources that I have right now. That’s it, really. I could have spared you all the details, and let this whole piece begin and end with that.
This was a rough one. Here’s a nice dog; his name is Harvey and he is a perfect yam.
A lie. I love money. Please give it to me in quantity, thank you.