The Long Game of a Writing Career

I’ve been doing a lot of math around this lately, thinking about what a writing career actually looks like over time. Not the big debut-novel fantasy with the six-figure advance, but the quieter, slower version. The long game of a writing career. The version where you build an audience book by book, and end up with a body of work and a real readership.

There’s a kind of math writers do in their heads when they think about time. They count backward from some imagined deadline and decide there isn’t enough time left. I hear this from writers all the time, especially those in midlife who wonder if they started too late.

One of my favorite writers, my dad, wrote his first book in his sixties and worried that he wouldn’t live long enough to see it published. That was twenty years ago. He’s in his 80s now and working on book #4. 

The truth is none of us can say how long we have left on this planet. The writers I know who have thrived don’t rush to the finish line. They take the time to write the books that are on their hearts, publishing them one at a time, and building their career along the way. 

Why a Giant Debut Advance Often Hurts More Than It Helps

It’s easy to imagine that a breakout debut solves everything. In reality, it often creates a completely different set of challenges.

The pressure on the second book can be enormous. Every review will compare the sophomore effort to the first. Before long, the hardest part isn’t writing the next book. It’s quieting the voice in your head that insists you only had one good book in you.

Then there’s another reality that aspiring authors rarely hear about.

A huge debut advance sounds like a dream, but it also sets enormous expectations. If your publisher pays a six-figure advance, they expect six-figure results. Even a well-reviewed novel can be considered disappointing if it doesn’t earn back that advance, and as a debut author it’s difficult to get the kind of press that leads to six-figure sales.

One of the biggest questions publishers ask when considering your next book is surprisingly simple: did the last one earn out? If it didn’t, you likely won’t get another book deal. And in case it needs saying (I know we’re not the most math-minded bunch) a $5,000 advance is easier to earn out than a $100,000 advance. 

How the Long Game of a Writing Career Actually Pays Off

Fortunately, there’s another path, and it’s the one I’ve found myself on.

A steady start. A publisher who asked for the next book. Then another after that. Nothing dramatic, just a career built in increments.

That’s how many solid writing careers are built.

Every new book introduces readers to your earlier work. Someone discovers your newest novel, enjoys it, then goes back and buys the books that came before it. Readers who find you late often work their way backward through everything you’ve written.

It’s not flashy. It doesn’t generate headlines. But after several books, that steady accumulation starts to work in your favor. Little by little, the body of work does the introducing for you.

This is the part I wish more writers understood. The publishing world loves talking about overnight success, but most successful careers aren’t built overnight. They’re built one book at a time.

You Probably Have Twenty Years (and That’s a Lot of Books)

Back to that twenty-year clock.

In twenty years, you could write ten books. That’s a serious body of work.

One of my favorite stories comes from Lisa See, the Pasadena novelist. I saw her speak at an event once and she told how writing runs in her family. Her mother reviewed books for a living, and one day Lisa’s grandfather picked up one of the to-be-reviewed romance novels on the kitchen table, flipped through it and declared, “I could do better than that.”

He was in his eighties. And he did.

He became a romance novelist, and his books sold remarkably well. He built an entirely new career at an age when most people assume those opportunities have already passed.

If you’ve been carrying around the fear that you started too late, maybe it’s time to set it down. Sometimes the best writing career belongs to a later bloomer, someone with a little more perspective and a lot less hurry.