How many books did you write?

Science fiction author Tobias S. Buckell is running a survey on his blog asking published novelists to say how many books they wrote before selling their first novel, and if their first written novel was the one they sold. If you’re an author, please take a minute (it just takes a minute) to fill out the survey. I think (thanks to Justine, who tipped me off about the survey) that it would be great to hear from as many genres as possible. So if you want to spread the word on your own blog… I know we get a lot of romance writers here.

(Buckell actually did an excellent, Brenda Hiatt “Show me the money!” type survey for science fiction authors about what kind of advances SFF houses were paying and whether or not an agent was worth the money. It’s here. Great stuff.)

For the record, I wrote four complete novels, a novella, and a couple of false starts/proposals before I sold my first book. The first book I sold was incomplete at the time of sale, but ended up being my fifth book. I’ve now written six books.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the results of this survey, because, unlike some of the respondents on Buckell’s blog, I think that most writers did not sell the first book they wrote (or at the very least, did not sell it first).

Some writers I know feel paralyzed by a need for their first book to be perfect, such that they never end up writing it in the first place. I understand this desire. You think “I am working so hard on our my book. If I think that it won’t make it, why would I bother working on it?” It’s almost necessary to believe it will sell, otherwise it’s difficult to commit yourself to it. That’s why programs like NaNoWriMo can work — they take some of the pressure of writing saleable work off you for a little bit.

(I only figured out shortly before finishing my first book that it wasn’t “the one” — but not even strongly enough to NOT ask for a published author friend’s advice, not strongly enough to NOT edit it or NOT send out a query. But by the time it was rejected, 9 months later, the scales had been lifted from my eyes.)

I’ve spoken before about what I think a first book is. It’s like a first pancake. But at the same time, I understand the need to believe otherwise — as long as you don’t let it ruin your writing. Do not let the need to sell keep you from the story. Protect the work. (This is my new mantra, by the way. I’m thinking of a tattoo: Opus Contege.) The work is more important than the industry, than the reviews, than the trolls, than the contest judges. Opus contege.

And some people do sell their first books, either right away or years later. Which is great for them. Fabulous! I’m very happy. But I don’t think it’s common. (And I don’t think it matters, because publishers slap “first novel” on a person’s first published novel, no matter what else they’ve got under their bed. Which isn’t, by the way, “misleading,” because the point is to signal to the customer if there’s anything else you can buy by the person, which there isn’t.) But I’m interested to see if I’m right.

And I’m interested to see how many people care. I know if I say that it doesn’t mean anything if you sell your first, someone who hasn’t visited Fezziwig’s Xmas party for a while will say it’s because I didn’t sell my first. (Seriously, have a truffle. Or some peppermint bark. Eggnog?) But I’ve never spent any time thinking about it. I know some people who’ve sold their first, some who haven’t, some who did and wished they hadn’t, some who did years later, and I never thought it had any bearing on talent. Did anyone else read that article in Wired discussing “experimentalists” vs. “conceptualists?” Interesting, what? Of course, I don’t know how much you can relate it to selling the first book you write, since sometimes that doesn’t have as much to do with quality as whether or not your editor is married/pregnant/offered a job in Sri Lanka.

Honestly, I think I’m more in awe of people who didn’t sell their first, or their sixth, or their twenty-fifth (unless we’re talking about the people who sold their first novel after years and years of rejection). Because those people stuck to it. They weren’t swayed by rejection letters or fickle markets, or editors leaving or lines shutting down or idiots telling them they sucked. They believed in themselves, and their work, and in getting better, and in getting out there. Persistence in this business is so hot.

I know I’m usually the first on the “writing statistics suck” bandwagon, because I do think it means people focus on the wrong things. Like thinking that if an agent gets 20,800 queries and requests 54 manuscripts, that you have a 1:385 chance of getting a request, when in actuality, most of these people have a pretty terrible chance, and a tiny percentage have a reallly good chance. But this survey of Bucknell’s doesn’t fall under the statistics umbrella so much as the myth busting umbrella. In this case, it’s the myth of the overnight sensation, the person who scribbles the book idea on the back of a napkin and is offered a million bucks. So statistics on real world first advances and real world writing career trajectories are actually helpful for the writer, so they can make realistic assessments that will actually help them with career planning. All hearing the stats on manuscripts submitted to manuscripts requested to manuscripts represented to manuscripts bought does is make them stress about their submission.

So, go respond to the survey. I’m eagerly awaiting the results. Meanwhile, back to the peppermint bark.