Late in January, my husband ran across a comic with a title remarkably similar to the title he’d chosen for his own. It’s not an uncommon issue; similar titles get used in stuff all the time. Heck, even identical titles crop up now and then. We discussed it a bit, laughed about it, and he mentioned in passing that the person who was promoting the comic didn’t seem to be the artist. On a whim, I looked it up. I was curious to see what kind of marketing team the artist had, since studying other types of marketing is always useful for any author. It only took a few clicks to learn the person heading up the project was the artist’s wife. But where was the artist?
He passed away before his series was complete.
This is a sadly familiar plight in fiction. Every time Game of Thrones comes up, people discuss the completely reasonable fear George R. R. Martin will pass away before the series is finished. Robert Jordan never saw the end of the Wheel of Time, and while Anne McCaffrey passed use of the Pern name on to her son, the series as we knew it died with her. One still living. One who lived a long, full life. One who died too soon, but knew the end was near. It’s different from the comic artist, who died suddenly, only a few years older than I am now.
As a creative, it’s crossed my mind many times. More, now that I’m an adult and a parent and balancing that with a want to create. Overwhelmingly, as I pursue my stories, I see one message emerging from every aspect of life: Don’t wait.
After spending more than half my life refining a story, I can’t say if it’s any better or worse than the first time I put it together, back when I was 14. Instead of fine-tuning over and over again, maybe my time would have been better spent pushing forward, finishing the subsequent books in the series, then moving on to other books. If I’d managed even a book a year, I could have 17 books published now instead of a small handful. If I’d worked up to my current level of productivity, I could have 40 or more.
Instead, I spent entirely too much time waiting.
Waiting for inspiration to strike.
Waiting to be a better writer.
Waiting for answers to query letters.
Waiting, and waiting, and drowning in a sea of wasted time, leaving me looking at my work and wondering when it would see the light of day.
Waiting for an answer nobody could give me.
Waiting for things that may never come.
Waiting, when I really needed to move.
Even now, I find myself waiting, even when I know better, when I want nothing more than to push forward.
Waiting for feedback that never seems to come.
Waiting for the funds to do things the right way.
Waiting for the time to get everything done.
But if I don’t move forward, everything I’ve spent the better part of two decades building may never emerge.
I read an article by an author who said he reached the level he’s at now by always saying yes. Any time he got an offer for publication, the answer was yes. There was no time to wait for something better, for the perfect fit, for the dream deal he’d always hoped for. There was only now, and hopefully, tomorrow would bring more stories.
Don’t wait.
Traditionally published books take so long to reach market that if I were to sign a contract for my series today, it could be ten years before the final book is published. I suffer anxiety, and sometimes I rub my fingers over my aching chest and wonder which time it’ll actually mean I’m dying, instead of simply being stressed. And then I wonder if I’d be so stressed if I wasn’t waiting.
Death is a morbid motivator, but it’s good at pushing us beyond our comfort zones. When I finally got to see my favorite band live, I wanted nothing more than to ask the lead singer for a selfie together. Instead I spent a couple hours on the edge of a panic attack, letting the opportunity slip by time and time again. My husband kept urging me to go ask. But I waited. And waited. Eventually, I saw what I was doing and challenged myself.
If I died on the trip home, would I regret in my final moments that I hadn’t been brave enough to ask?
I got up and pushed my way over. I didn’t even have to ask. All I did was hold up my phone and he grinned and said, “Yeah!”
I clicked a couple pictures and went back to my seat, but I felt better. For just a moment, I could die without regrets.
If I went now, my biggest regret would be never sharing the stories I have written that I desperately want to release. So that should be my biggest goal for the year. Getting it done. Getting it out there. Knowing that after it’s done, that for just a moment, I could die without regrets.
No more excuses.
Don’t wait.
You know, I really needed this. Thank you 🙂
I’m currently working on my own book which I started and finished in about a year, maybe almost two years (13-14 years old, I don’t remember the exact timespan. I had a lot of it planned out before I actually got to writing it when I was just starting Year 9 if I remember correctly…). I’m now 18 and still working on its second draft. Yup. XD I ended up not touching it for a few years until I was like 16 because I got so caught up in school and forgot to focus on something I loved as well.
Then I got to working on it again, but things have been slow going. I was sporadic on working on it until last year, when I had a few months of steady rewriting it (it does seriously need the work, the first draft was my first ever serious attempt at writing) and then things became sporadic again because of college, but also I’ve been so picky with myself and constantly kept going back to ‘fix’ the same bits, or waiting for ‘inspiration’ to strike, like you said.
And I just took a proper look at your blog for the first time (sorry it took so long haha!), found this and honestly you’ve literally just made me realise what I’ve been doing all this time.
So thank you!! I’m going to go make myself write now (hopefully. hopefully it won’t end in me staring at my screen for an hour xD).