Introduction

Today I am going to discuss the stages of being an author. These stages are my opinion. These stages may not be true for every single author out there. I realize every author is going to have their own journey. But when I think over my own author journey, these are the stages I noticed. It may be that you will notice yourself somewhere on this journey as well.

While it may take one author a year or two to get through one stage, it could take another author 5 to 10 years to get through the same stage. Each author’s journey will be unique to their own situation. Some of us will need more time in one stage than another. It’s even possible that an author might bounce back-and-forth between stages. For example, an author may be in stage three but then reverts back to stage two or an author in stage four may find they have gone back to stage three. I have noticed the progression was not linear for me, so it may not be linear for everyone.

With that said, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this post.

Stage one: Novice at Play

During this stage, all of the story ideas are fresh and brand new. Writing is complete play at this level. The author has not thought of things like word choice, passive versus active voice, repetition, and other elements that come into the nuts and bolts of writing a story. The author at this stage may understand concepts like plot, character development, foreshadowing, and other storytelling elements, but these will be raw in form.

Some authors will give little thought to an audience. Back in 2007 to 2010, the thought of making anything with your writing as a self published author was foreign. I think that was to the benefit of many authors, especially me. This is my opinion, of course. Some may argue, and rightfully so, the thought of having an audience as a new writer is better because it forces you  to pay careful attention to polishing up your story early on in your author journey. I, however, believe that the joy of simply writing out a story that stems from the heart is far more important. The passion is what will drive the author to naturally develop compelling stories. The author will want to fine-tune the craft elements to make stories even better. When you are doing what you love, you will improve without being told to.

Stage two: The Mechanics of Writing

This is when the author realizes they have an audience. Suddenly, the author realizes that someone out there is reading their books. For me, this was the most frightening stage of all. I found it much easier to write when I believed I was the only person who is ever going to read the story I wrote. Some people wonder why I bothered publishing books when I didn’t believe they would ever find an audience. I published my books because I wanted an easy format to read them in. I wanted them in paperback and e-book so I wouldn’t have to lug around a computer or notebook whenever I wanted to read my book. Today, most authors are looking to make money, so they will go in to this with the expectation of finding an audience. Because of that, finding an audience will not scare them away. Knowing you have an audience puts pressure on you to pay attention to the way you are writing your stories.

This is where the critique groups come in. I realize not every writer is going to join a critique group, but authors will want to polish up their stories the best that they can. After all, if the goal is money, you want to present a professional product. Books that are haphazardly written and thrown up onto a retailer do not make the most money. There has to be some compelling element to the story to get a reader to invest their money into the book. And let’s say your goal is not money. You still want the reader to enjoy the story. Loving the process of writing will make you want to sharpen your skills as a writer and that will make you grow exponentially in your storytelling.

Writing at this stage is still fun, but it is more challenging.

Stage three: The Heights of Success

This is where you make more money or you develop a larger reader base than you dreamed possible. There is a lot of enthusiasm and excitement at this level. There is also quite a few low points because while you are receiving praise from people who love your work, you are also receiving criticism from people who hate your work. Most likely, you will be tempted to change your book to appease the critic.

I have done this, and all I can say, is that it’s a pointless endeavor. I do not believe there is any point in trying to please the critic.  I spent a couple of years changing a few of my books, and I never once heard a critic say they reread those books and were happy with the changes that I made. The critic is not likely to stick around or care. Or if the critic does stick around, all they do is read your new stuff and find more reasons to criticize your work. That has been my experience. Maybe there’s an author out there with a different experience. All I know is that I had readers who genuinely loved my work, and they were disappointed in the changes I made to the books. So in the end, I change those books back to their original form.  I learned that it is far more important to focus on the people that love your work than to chase after pleasing the critic.

With that said, this stage is a lot of fun because you are reaping the rewards for your effort. The praise will outweigh the criticisms. If you’re in this stage, enjoy every moment of it. It’s a natural high in the author journey.

Stage four: What Goes Up Must Come Down

No author will ever stay at the top forever. This is some thing I believe with all my heart. Sooner or later income drops. Sooner or Later, you’re not growing readership as quickly as you were before. Sooner or later, it gets a little harder to keep up the momentum for writing. Sooner or later, the highs wain. I think it’s a fact of life. There is not a single creative person who has stayed at the top forever. Someone else will come in and take your place.  This stage is probably the second scariest one because you start to believe you have lost your edge. You start to wonder if you’re doing something wrong. You think that it used to be easy, or at least easier than it is now. You didn’t change anything, so why is the stuff you used to do no longer working?

This is a stage where I tried everything I could to get things going again. I started chasing different marketing fads. I tried to write faster than I did before. I even wrote to market. I pushed aside passion projects, believing that if I wrote to market, I would get back to stage three. I was afraid if I didn’t keep the momentum up, I was going to lose my readers. I was also afraid that I was going to lose my clout as an author in the writing community because I no longer had the sales to back up the stuff that I was saying.

This stage, to me, is the hamster in the wheel stage. Basically, you throw everything and the kitchen sink at the wall and hope something sticks. Sometimes the effort will work, and you’ll see a boost, but sometimes you will see no reward for your efforts at all. It’s unpredictable. And that is what makes it so stressful.

This is when you truly understand how much writing has become a business, whether you went into this intending for the writing to be a business or not. The business side ends up taking a toll on your emotional health.

Stage five: The Great Depression

For authors who sincerely cares about what they’re doing on an emotional level, watching your income drop means that you are not succeeding in pleasing your audience. Now, I realize that you are pleasing the readers who have loved your work the entire time. I hate to say it, but it is easy to lose sight of those people when you start to think of reaching more and more people. You see, making money is more than a financial goal. The goal is to get more more readers for your books. When an author makes more money,  they are assured they are finding a wider audience. So, when income goes down, what it really means is that less people care about our work. That’s what makes this stage so depressing.

After stage four, the author comes to realize there is nothing that they can do. A lot of this stuff is out of our control. We can’t control who sees the book. We can’t control who takes an interest in the book. We can’t control who decides to buy the book. We can’t control who decides to review the book. We can’t decide who tells other people about the book. so much of being a published author is outside our control.

At this stage, the author has to decide whether to keep writing or to quit. If they keep writing, do they keep writing the same genre, or do they move on to something else? There’s a lot of back-and-forth between continuing versus quitting. There would be days during this stage that I would cry for hours at a time because the whole thing seems pointless. I would just dream of quitting. I imagined how much less stress I would feel in my life if I could simply not be a writer anymore. When I was just a stay-at-home mom, I didn’t have the kind of stress I did as a published author. I didn’t have to meet deadlines, I didn’t have to keep up word counts, I didn’t have to keep coming up with new story ideas, and I didn’t have to worry about managing a business that I had to report every year to my accountant.

There are valid reasons an author may just want to throw in the towel and walk away. Writing is a creative process. That creativity takes a lot of work out of an author, and there are times when it can be draining. This is an aspect that is rarely ever brought up in the writing community. Most writers just want to act like writing is always easy and fun. I know there’s the saying that goes something like, “you bleed words onto the page.” But it is very hard to keep coming back to the page when almost every single day it feels like you are pulling teeth to get every word down. You go through this struggle for a good year or two and it leads to burnout. You can only fight burnout for so long before it finally catches up to you. And then you hit rock bottom. That is where this stage leads if the author chooses to keep writing in spite of it being so hard and painful.

Looking back, if I had given myself permission to slow down, or at least take an extended vacation from writing, I could have saved myself a lot of grief. There were a couple of author friends who advised me to take a break, but the reason I told myself I couldn’t was because I was the primary breadwinner in my household. My husband and my children depended on me to keep bringing money in. I felt trapped, so I kept on writing.

Stage six: It All Comes Full Circle but with Some Benefits

I feel like this is the stage where things take a turn for the better. I believe I am just now entering this particular stage. I knew I’d been carrying the weight of stage five years, but I didn’t realize just how heavy that weight was until I made the decision to walk away from writing. Suddenly, I felt like I could relax. And in relaxing, my mind was finally able to rest. Then a spark came to me. The spark was brief, but it was there. I didn’t do anything about it. Then I felt another spark, and this one lasted longer. This happened for quite some time. I didn’t do anything with these sparks at first because I really wanted to give my mind time to decompress from everything. I just let the sparks come and go, but then I felt that longing to get back to the page. And I hadn’t felt that longing since stage three.

I am still figuring the stage out, but I suspect that this is the stage where the enthusiasm for writing returns, and when it returns, it will bring wisdom. When I say, wisdom, I mean that I am aware there’s an audience out there, I am aware the critic is out there, I am aware that income goes up and down, and  I am aware that there are times I need to slow down and take a break. I am no longer under the illusion that money is easy to make and that income will always go up. While that might seem depressing, I find it freeing. Now, when I publish a book, I am not under the weight of having to sell a certain number of copies in order to validate myself as a published author. I don’t feel that I have anything to prove to myself or to anyone else anymore. I have come to the point where I don’t care what the critics say about my work.  I am still concerned about what the people who love my work think of my future books, but since they have been so supportive and encouraging in the past, I am confident that they will be pleased.

I believe this is the stage where authors get to play again. I am looking forward to entering this stage. This time, validation of the work does not come from income, nor does it come from the number of readers I have. Validation comes from the story itself. As long as I am living out the adventure in the story, that will be the reward.