If I remember rightly, this topic might have been my suggestion, and I think I suggested it because at the time I imagined it would be easy to drop a top ten list and waltz away.
You'll notice there's no top ten list.
I've spent the week contemplating what I'd tell younger writer me if I had the chance. It was stuff like 'being published doesn't equal success'. 'Being published does not mean you have it made.' 'Polish up your armor, you're going to need it.' It's all super depressing stuff and the key piece that finally made me pull up short on a "Hey. Wait a minute." was the fact that not a single thing I could think of to say to younger writer me is actionable.
Maybe I've grown jaded, but cryptic advice without concrete, actionable goals/outcomes aren't worth the breath to utter them. Or the heartbeats spent listening to them.
So I've had a rethink. What actionable things do I wish I'd known before I'd been published. Okay. I suppose the first piece is that I wish I'd known that agents could do as much harm as good - but the kicker is that there's no way (assuming you've done due diligence around knowing who you're hiring) to know until you're in the situation. The actionable piece to that is to enter into that business relationship with eyes wide open and with the full knowledge that a day may come when one or the other of you may have to sever the relationship. I wish I'd known to have a plan for both best case AND worst case scenarios regarding options clauses. That means I wish I'd come up with a plan for what I'd do with book three whether my publisher wanted the book or not. I didn't. So I flailed. In hindsight, I perceive how devastating flailing is for me. A writer needs a plan and this writer in particular needs a plan, even if that plan is nothing more than drafting a novel just for the fun of seeing how the characters spark and ignite.
I notice that most of what I wish I could communicate isn't actually about writing, it's about the business thereof. I believed I had a reasonable grounding in the business of publishing because of RWA - and maybe I did, but in no way was I adequately prepared to face some of the challenges that came with being published. It is true that driven by those challenges I took a couple of crash business courses aimed at entrepreneurs. They helped - it was there that I learned to plan for both the best and worst case scenarios. I think if I could only give younger writer me a single piece of actionable advice, it would be to take those business classes before getting published. The ride might still have been bumpy, but it might have involved slightly less flailing. Or maybe different flailing.
That's the thing about changing the past. You never know what kind of snowball effect it'll have on the future.
Huh.
You know what? I take it all back. If I could tell younger writer me anything, it simply be "Write. Never give up on it. Never give up on you."
