Long-term Careers

Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog is a treasure, a gift for writers, readers, and especially aspiring writers.

Have you read this excellent series of posts from authors with long and productive careers?

You can find them all HERE. 

This morning, I caught up with a few.

HERE IS SOME of what K.L. Going says about changes she's seen. 

The last line of this passage is worth contemplating (the "bold" for emphasis is mine):


When I first started out, it was a big deal that I simply had a website. I had certain fun features I’d update periodically, but there was not any expectation that there would be new material every week or every few days. There was no Twitter or Instagram. It took very little of my mental energy.

(Beach Lane, 2017)

But over the years, social media venues have bred like rabbits and it’s hard not to get caught up in each new trail, not knowing which ones will pan out in the long run.

It’s too easy to spend all of your creative energy on coming up with clever or prolific posts instead of writing new books.

These days, there’s a much higher demand to do marketing well.

Also, feedback on your books comes instantly from many sources and it’s detailed. It feels personal.

In the past, there was a general sense of a book’s reception, but there wasn’t that kind of instant reaction from Joe Smith in Washington, D.C. who gave your book a certain number of stars.

General feedback is wonderful because it can help improve your writing skills for future books, but specific feedback can feel disproportionately important even when it shouldn’t really have any impact at all.