Mid Career Advice at Tobias Buckell Online

Journal Entry

Mid Career Advice

I noticed Jay Lake pointing out discussions about the lack of mid career advice online. I think he does point out a good reason for the relative sparsity of that sort of advice:

…how can someone dispensing generic advice on the Internet address my issues as a mid-career writer? The further along I get in my career and my work, the more idiosyncratic those become. All new writers need to learn about manuscript format, submission processes, what editors really do, storytelling basics and intermediates, the whole process of ‘breaking in’, and so forth. Mid-career writers are like Dostoevsky’s unhappy families; each is developing in their own way.

This is a good point. I’d also add that there is the question of who an author’s blog is talking to.

At the start of an author’s career they are very concerned about the details a starting author has to focus on. Prepping manuscripts, writing, practicing, submitting, and so on. But come a certain amount of success, that point at which an author would begin to focus on those mid career sausage making, the authors themselves are in a different place.

Now the author is not just in a different place, internally and career-wise, but the audience reading their musings has also changed a bit as well. It’s not just other beginning authors who’re now primarily reading their musings. If the author has published a novel, chances are a significant, if not larger, chunk of their readers are now actual readers and not aspiring authors.

The audience changes. For one, the aspiring authors, whether they realize it or mean to do it, start pushing back. If you start thinking out loud about problems they wish they had, there gets to be a certain tension. I full on encountered this when I had just finished my first novel. At a con a dear friend (and to this day still a dear friend and someone I respect a great deal) had asked what the toughest part writing this novel was. I’d responded that I’d just become noticed enough that halfway through I got asked to write two short stories, and paused the book to do so. My friend responded, ‘wow, I wish I had that kind of problem.’ At the time it was a punch to the gut, because I really wanted to struggle through talking about the difficulty of saying ‘no’ to opportunities I’d never had before, but then how it had killed momentum on the book, and I wanted to talk about how hard it was to juggle what needed to be done, versus new chances. It’s a problem I still haven’t fully figured out. But it was clear that my privilege in having this tough choice mean I couldn’t clearly talk this out easily to those without this same privilege as I had when talking about beginner issues.

Then, what about my responsibility to general readers, not interested in the wonkish writing related stuff? Most of my readers once I hit mid career became readers who were not interested in becoming writers themselves. I saw this blow up when I tried to explain once why my books had a short shelf life. In my own mind it was a factual business discussion about the ins and outs of bookstores and how they stocked books. But it was read as a slam on a book chain, and I got a lot of confusion from readers, and then industry professionals who didn’t read the original post hearing I was ’slamming bookchain X.’ In similar fashion, talking about lulls in your career might make people suddenly talk about how they’d heard your career had ‘failed.’

So yeah, talking mid career shop suddenly becomes something more interesting to do in person, or between groups of writers in roughly the same place as you are, less misinterpretations occur. So yeah, mid career advice fades because each person’s career is taking on a personality of its own, and it’s harder to toss out advice that everyone can grapple with. And its because the people listening are different, they’re more interested in what you’re going to write next or how you came to write it, or your take on X or Y, not necessarily your second guesses about the trajectory of your career.

I still carefully will talk about aspects of it, but with all that, I can understand why most stick to beginner advice and dodge that other messy stuff.

Filed under the topic Journal on July 22nd 2010 at 4:10 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.

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10 Responses so far

1. Karen Miller on Jul 22nd, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Bravo, Tobias, for touching on a truly difficult and awkward subject. The impulse to pay it forward often runs face-first into the reality of being in a place of privilege, where any kind of honest discussion about the business is (mis)construed as whining, ingratitude, selfishness and so forth. Add in the delightful frequency of either mistaken or deliberate misinterpretations on the internet and what you’re looking at is a perfect storm of negative consequences for what is, at heart, a generous act.
I remember reading an interview with Ewan McGregor, where he talked about making the second SW prequel film. Hayden Christensen asked him about what it was like working on something so huge and he ended up saying, You need to discover that on your own. And I think this might the same thing. As much as more established authors really want to light the way for the writers walking a few paces behind them, because we wish we’d had some of that illumination ourselves, at the end of the day there are some lessons that need to be learned first hand. Or maybe it’s just a case of talking specifics in a one-on-one environment, answering particular questions, instead of talking in wide ranging generalities via a more impersonal blog post.
Either way, go you for raising the question.
2. James Swallow on Jul 23rd, 2010 at 4:32 am
Great piece, Tobias. I’m lucky enough to have a support system of fellow writers to discuss this kinda stuff. QTF.
3. Mark Terry on Jul 23rd, 2010 at 9:45 am
I’m going to link to this, because it absolutely hits something I’ve been thinking about. On my own blog I often contemplate the difficulties of staying in the business of novel-writing and the ups-and-downs and moodiness that can come with it (at least for me) and I do realize there are a lot of unpublished, aspiring writers reading it who probably think I’m writing. I try to write about the writing life in as unvarnished a fashion as possible, but it’s clear that a lot of people just want you to be inspiring and tell them that if they just persist they’ll be the next JK Rowling, that you shouldn’t ever be a “Debby Downer” and suggest that, “Hey, dudes, this is a bitchin’ hard industry to make a living in and I don’t know the freakin’ secret handshake either.”
4. Mark Terry on Jul 23rd, 2010 at 10:10 am
I should say: “I do realize there are a lot of unpublished, aspiring writers reading it who probably think I’m whining.”
5. Christopher Kastensmidt on Jul 23rd, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Great post, Tobias. Thanks! Seems like the beginning of a good discussion.
I’m one of those writers trying to make it to mid-career, but far enough out of the gate that the newbie advice is no longer all that important either. This kind of discussion is relevant.
6. Leah on Jul 24th, 2010 at 1:38 am
Thank you for the very interesting perspective. I think you’re right about the change of audience of the blog, as well as the perception of what’s said — perception is reality, these days. I am finding these continued musings fascinating. Thanks again!
7. Ron on Jul 24th, 2010 at 7:57 am
Interesting take, as always.
8. Stephen Watkins on Jul 27th, 2010 at 10:14 am
You know, as a reader who is also an unpublished writer who can’t even say he’s at the beginning of his career (I don’t have near enough rejections to my name, nor yet a single acceptance for that matter), I can say I actually appreciate hearing the unvarnished truth as it were.
Because, you know, it is a problem I’d like to have, and when and if I ever do have that problem, I’d like to have an idea of how to handle it. And if I never do have those kinds of mid-career problems, well, at least it was an interesting intellectual exercise.
Whining, I think, it is not. Perspective matters.
9. John Barnes on Jul 28th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
And yet another wrinkle: many writers at beginning of career are looking for the Magic Have A Career Dingus, and no matter what you say, some of them will insist on finding it in what you said. I don’t worry so much about them being disappointed, but I hate the idea that when I just say something about a problem, it becomes authoritative gospel in some minds.
Playing with Tobias’s example, I make it a rule not to turn down work but that means I have to be upfront, as in “I’d love to but I will be a minimum of four months past your deadline”. (that’s what I did on a recent last short story, and it ended up being five, but I’d provided a warning, and I re-warned as things got worse). It’s one solution to having gotten to a point where there are conflicting demands, and it’s one that works all right for me, right now. But somewhere out there somebody is going to read that as “Always take every job and turn it in four months late.”
10. Tobias Buckell on Jul 28th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
John, that’s an interesting solution!
And yeah, lots of people seem to gospelize advice, which is something else I find troubling.

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