On Letting Go

An Author's Perspective on Failure

We all go through this, but it's not something that gets any easier as time goes on. In fact, it gets harder the more successful you become. Part of that is because of your Fans, and part of it is because of choices, hard choices, you have to make — and realizing you made them wrong.

As an author, you have to make a decision on what to write. Each time you sit down and start to type (or pick up your pen mayhaps) you have made a decision about which story you are about to tell. If you have a lot of stories out there, and if you've had a lot of best sellers (over 2/3rds for me) that choice is very much ruled by financial (and Fan) concerns. I have bills to pay, I have people to pay, I have a business that needs to be maintained (and I have quarterly taxes to pay as well). On top of that I have Fan expectations to meet, and trust me when I say that a lot of Fans can be incredibly fickle.

When you sit down to write a story, you have to take your Fans into account. What are they expecting from me? What do they want to see? I've got a lot of stories I'd like to tell, that I want to tell, but I know that there are ones my Fans will not enjoy. That some Fans will out and out hate and I may lose them forever — and yes I've had that happen over some of the most minute items in a story accompanied by a scathing review.

So do I write the same ole' same ole'?

Well no, you can't do that either, because then they'll just get bored and stop reading it. Then again, a premise they loved for books 1 and 2 they'll sometimes just abandon on book 3.

And don't even get me started on those assholes who won't buy a trilogy until it's complete. Those people need to do the world a favor and never ever ever buy any book again — better yet, just forget how to read. Yeah, you got your fee-fees hurt. So now you go around destroying other authors who had nothing to do with it. You have no idea of the level of contempt every writer out there, who is struggling to deliver, has for you.

So you decide to 'stretch your wings' a little. You decide to try something new. You jump off that ledge with your arms outstretched and hope to fly. When you do, it's rewarding and enjoyable. You got to do something new, something different, and your Fans loved it, and you. Maybe even you gain a bunch of new ones.

And when you don't, you fall to the rocks below to break your bones and writhe in agony as you bleed.

And then you walk away from that failure. Maybe wiser, maybe not. But you learn to walk away. Because the last time you 'tried again', you once again landed on those rocks, and it hurt even more than the first time.

Understand, that for an author to walk away from a series or a book that they wrote is incredibly hard. We've invested part of our life in that book. That book meant everything to us. We lived it, we breathed it, it was the foremost thing in our mind for weeks, months, possibly even years.

Now it's dead.

It is a harsh and painful experience — especially if you had a plot that you were working through, if the next book was already in your mind, or even written down on paper. But of course it gets worse, it has to get worse, that's just the way the life of an author is...

The Fans.

First you'll get the ones who are very upset with you for writing what you did. Because it either a) took you away from writing what they wanted, or b) they really hated it and will castigate you for wasting their time (even if they didn't read it).

Second you'll get the ones who just give it a hard pass. That's nowhere near as bad of course - you've learned to understand that you can't please everyone and you learn to accept it, but still you feel like you let them down. I don't know of any author who wants to let their Fans down. They're the reason we're here. Our goal is to make them happy.

Third, there's the Fans who liked what you wrote, but now you have to tell them that there isn't going to be another book. That they will never find out how the story progresses because not enough people bought it, or had an interest in it, for you to be able to afford to write the next book. No one likes to disappoint their Fans, even if it's just a small number of them at this point (and it is, because the sales tell you just how many people paid). Worse yet, you will continue to hear from these people for the rest of your life. Unless of course you pull the book from production - but maybe still even then.

It's not an easy decision, to kill a series or a sequel; for all that financially it's the most obvious thing in the world to do and the only thing that makes sense. Because if you think YOU are invested in a story or a series, Trust Me, when I say that the author of it is far, far, more invested in it. We created it after all.

Now I have told people that over the years, if the sales come up, I may go back to it. I did that once and I lost my shirt - literally. So I'm hesitant to do it again. I did try, sort of, recently to try and do that with something else that I wrote and while there was some small measure of success, the writing on the wall is clear that it's done.

I always blame myself for these failures, because who else can I? I can't blame the Fans - that's just stupid! And wrong. If I fail to provide them with what they want and will enjoy, that's on me. It's always on me. For the ones who suddenly rage quit because I did something wrong, I even feel bad about that! I feel like I somehow misled them. I'm an entertainer. I'm in the entertainment business. If you're not entertained, then I'm not doing my job right. Sure, I know that I can't entertain everyone, but I still need to do my best for those that I can.

So yes, giving up on a series or a sequel is a very painful thing for any author. There are people out there who will tell you that you should still write that book because they'll buy it. But it's not worth it for me to devote a few months of my life to creating something that a small percentage of my Fans will read, when I can write something else that most or all of them will. Not just because of the money (which I need to survive) but because the whole reason I'm here is write for all of them.

I asked John Ringo, a far more successful author than I am, about this once several years ago. He told me that you just have to walk away and never come back.

But it's still hard to let go.