Three things I would NOT have wanted to hear as a new writer

They're true though.

Years ago, I knew a writer who was desperate to get published.

She thought if she could just get her foot in the door, everything would fall into place. She was motivated, had creative ideas, and frankly, she had plenty of time to write. In a lot of ways, she was lucky!

But she was not . . . a great writer, if you know what I mean. She was new. Still learning. Most writers aren’t very good when they first start out, and she wasn’t an exception, even though she thought she probably was.

She also didn’t have the life experience that would help her write stand-out books. Though she read a lot, she hadn’t read widely enough, or intentionally enough. She tried to rush it, frankly. She didn’t want to wait.

She did know what she wanted, at least: a deal with a major publishing house. She wasn’t going accept anything else. She worked hard. She learned. And (eventually) she got better.

As ungenerous as this sounds, I’m glad she didn’t get published when she first thought she was ready. Or even when she second thought she was ready. Because she wasn’t. She needed time and practice.

Okay, by now I’m sure you can figure it out: I’m talking about me.

And with that in mind, here are a few things I would NOT have wanted to hear when I was that new writer — but are totally true.

This time is a gift.

One thing I was desperately trying to rob myself of was the freedom to experiment. I wanted to get into that publishing machine so bad that I didn’t even consider what a good place I was in.

But look, back then I didn’t have any deadlines, expectations, or an author brand to maintain, so I got to play around with epic fantasies, romantic fantasies, urban fantasies, and dark fantasies. (I’ve always been a fantasy girlie, it’s true.)

I started different projects and abandoned them when they didn’t hold my interest. I finished a ton of things, including duologies and trilogies. And I tried on different voices, story structures, and conflicts.

I could write literally whatever I wanted. Whenever. With no deadlines aside from my own goals.

Actually, I had this one story about a half-harpy named Harriet that got a ton of requests and agents saying how much they liked it.¹ The attention that story got was a sign that I was improving! But looking back, I’m glad no one offered on it. That wasn’t a subgenre I wanted to keep writing in. I’d just been scratching an itch. Trying on a style to see if I liked it.

Before this was my job, I had the freedom to just . . . play around with a whole book.

But that’s not happening now.

When you’re dealing with publishing schedules, that’s not (always) an option. Often, those surprising, experimental books have to get deprioritized in favor of finishing contracted work.² This is a great problem to have, of course! Don’t get me wrong. But if you want to play around with something else, it stinks to know you don’t have the time.

The freedom to do whatever you want, to learn what kind of writer you are, to figure out what type of stories you truly love telling? It’s so precious.

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Those books will never be published, but they were worth writing anyway.

Any time I mention that my first published book was the seventeenth book I completed,³ people ask me if I’m going to go back to any of those early books and try to publish them.

I always give the same answer.

No.

I mean, there are a couple of stories I’d like to work on again, but I’d never give them to my agent to sell in the shape they are now.

I’ll go back to Spinning Story (ms #16) one day, but I’m going to rewrite it from the ground up. Even the world it takes place in will change. There’s another one — ms #2 — that I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again over the years. I went back and reread the latest draft of that recently and . . . same thing. It was the best I could do at the time, but I’m a different writer now. A different person.

So no. I can’t — and won’t try — to go back to those stories as they are currently. I don’t actually want to go back to most of them. They served their purpose: they were practice books. Like that harpy book I mentioned before, they helped me learn what kind of stories I do and don’t want to write. They helped me figure out structure, character motivation, stakes, etc.

They also helped me learn that I could finish books. I could finish series. I could write a lot.

I learned so much from all those manuscripts.

But just because I wrote them doesn’t mean anyone should read them. Not for free and certainly not for money.

And yet, I know Past Me would be furious to hear that all this work — all these years of pouring herself into book after book — was just . . . practice.

There’s nothing wrong with practice, though. No one puts on pointe shoes for the first time and performs Swan Lake, right? You can’t just grab a scalpel and do heart surgery! (Legally.)

So why do we think it should be different for writing?

Some work will be practice work. That’s okay.

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Publishing won’t make you happy.

Past Me would have hated this one the most, because she truly believed that getting published would unlock the secret to eternal happiness. She thought once she got that first contract, it would be writing all day, occasional book tours, and no trouble at all selling another book. Once you’re in, you’re in! And even if her more experienced author friends tried to tell her differently, well, remember, she thought she was an exception.

She was not an exception.

I was not. I’m still not.

Look, I’m not saying publishing won’t ever make you happy. It truly has changed my life in ways I never expected. But publishing can’t be relied upon for happiness.

The publishing part is a job. It has its wonderful days . . . and crushingly disappointing days.

All the feelings will be felt.

So if you can’t count on publishing to make you happy, it has to be the books. If you don’t love writing and you can’t find your joy in the stories, publishing won’t fix that.

I mean, I’m not saying writing is always a delightful experience, hah. Some days just suck, the characters don’t cooperate, and you can’t remember the word gizmo for no particular reason. Obviously, I’m speaking about the overall experience of writing. Is it good? Do you like it? Because there will be days that publishing makes you so unhappy that all you have is the writing.

Remember why you started telling stories.

Bonus cat photo on this one! Just in case you feel like it’s been a downer.

I don’t feel like it’s a downer, actually (though I get it if you do!), because I feel really fortunate to be in a place where I can look back at my younger self and see how things worked out.

The time I spent learning, the manuscripts I’m glad I wrote but don’t need to revisit, the focus on my writing — it was worth it to be able to share stories I’m proud of, to have the comforting knowledge that I can finish things, and to have a much clearer idea of what kind of writer I am. Waiting, using that time to its fullest — even though I was super bitter about it — prepared me for the long haul of being an author.

And again, I wouldn’t have liked to hear these things early on. But maybe someone else out there will.

Happy writing, friends.

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Related posts you might be interested in:

• What happens when you aren’t your publisher’s Chosen One?

• Do I really want to publish my books?

• Author lifestyle

• The regular life of being an author

• Writing at the speed of publishing

• Get a hobby

• How to completely control your writing career

• When you know you’re writing for a limited readership

Fun number thing I did to myself:

INCARNATE was the seventeenth manuscript I finished and the first one I sold. BYE FOREVER, I GUESS is going to be my seventeenth published book. And there was a grim little period where I thought it might be the last — yes, even with everything else going on in my career. I worried BYE FOREVER might be bye forever. (It’s not, though! More on that some other time.)

But anyway, my seventeenth book (holy cats!) is coming out October 22. Here are a few places where you can preorder a copy and make me look very cool to my publisher:

• One More Page (signed and personalized Oct 22)

• Scrawl Books (signed and personalized on Nov 14)

• Bookshop.org

• Barnes and Noble (use PREORDER25 today to get 25% off)

• Amazon

Books on Kindle Unlimited:

Don’t forget, if you’re a KU reader, I have a ton of books currently available there. (This won’t last, so jump on it while you still can!)

MY LADY JANE } MY PLAIN JANE } MY CALAMITY JANE

INCARNATE } ASUNDER } INFINITE

BEFORE SHE IGNITES | AS SHE ASCENDS | WHEN SHE REIGNS

1. Sometime within the last few years, actually, an agent brought it up to me out of the blue. As in, we were discussing something unrelated and then she remembered that I was that Jodi who wrote the harpy story. Totally shocked me that she remembered it!

2. I know I’ve talked about that with BYE FOREVER, I GUESS. I started writing it in 2018! I didn’t finish it until 2021 and sold it in 2022. (It comes out in less than two months now!) Seriously? This book is 50k words.

3. So, not counting all the ones I wrote big chunks of and never finished!