JA Konrath wrote an excellent blog on April 23, about how writers should exude confidence:

We all have lapses in confidence. It’s human. But if you want to have a writing career, DON’T SHOW WEAKNESS IN PUBLIC.

The secret to being a winner is confidence. Since most of us lack in this department, being sensitive artist types, we have to learn to fake confidence.

Of course he’s right.  And I guess I’m pretty good at faking confidence.  But the truth is, I’ve always felt like Charlie Brown.  

The publishing industry excels at making you feel like a loser.  Although I’ve enjoyed quite a bit of success, the journey to this point has been a gantlet of nasty reviewers and rigid bean counters and grumpy readers wielding clubs, ready to whack you over the head.  So it’s no surprise that any writer who’s had a slow climb to the bestseller lists (it took me till book #10, if you count my romances) will arrive at that destination called “success” feeling a little bruised and very uncertain about how long she can stay.  And feeling uncertain, too, about whether she deserves to even be there.

Joe Konrath described a panel where one writer essentially admitted that he was a loser and that no one would want to buy his book.  There were times when I could’ve been that writer, but thankfully I resisted the urge to blurt out how much of I loser I was. 

Loserhood isn’t just about book sales, either.  It’s about who gets the media attention, who gets the extravagant praise, and who gets asked out for drinks.  When everyone is fawning slavishly over author XYZ, and ignoring you, well — the result is a whole room of writers who feel like losers. 

I suspect our industry is particularly tough on egos.  Part of it is just the sheer odds against anyone getting published.  Years of rejection prime you for disappointment. Then when you finally get published, you’re facing a new set of odds against your book being a big success in the markektplace.  I’ve read that about 300,000 new titles are published every year.  Many of those are self-published books, but still — the competition is staggering.  Then your book comes out and suddenly everyone’s a critic.  A bad review in the local newspaper gets seen by all your friends and relatives.  A bad review on Amazon gets seen by the whole world.  Yeah, okay, so you’re a published author.

You still feel like a loser.

I have a feeling most writers feel as unsure of themselves as I do. The industry almost forces us to feel that way.  But Joe’s right – part of our job is to exude confidence and success. 

So fake it.

Before I address the subject of this blog, I just want to say that some people have pointed out to me that writing and oral storytelling are not the same thing.  And they’re absolutely right.  I know some great writers who are horrible at telling a story face to face.  They get nervous in front of an audience, or they can’t collect their thoughts on the spot, so they ramble.  My last blog title should have read, “Are novelists born or are they made?”  Because writing a novel is a much more deliberate process than just getting behind a microphone and speaking off the cuff.  A novelist has the time to consider where her story is going, and if she has “the writer’s knack”, she’ll instinctively know which plot choices will lead to the most dramatic or interesting outcomes.

That’s what boring writers lack, that instinct for the dramatic.

My last blog also brought in this comment: “Why do you crediit only the Irish for storytelling talent?  What about the Chinese?  Surely they have just as much talent?”

And yes, I deserve to be taken to task for this.  It’s true that China has a rich literary history, going back thousands of years.  My mother’s grandfather was a respected poet in China, and among my most treasured possessions are very old bound copies of his poems.  My own philosophy of storytelling parallels that of a 9th century Chinese literary figure, Han Yu, who believed that telling a story in a clean straightforward manner was the most elegant way to write.  He thought that writing which was overly flowery and too stylized was dishonest –  and his beliefs reflected ancient China’s Classical Prose Movement. 

So yes, China does indeed have a long literary tradition.

But for a long time, I’ve been aware of a dearth of Chinese-American novelists.  Once you get past Amy Tan and Maxine Hong-Kingston, how many bestselling Asian American writers can you name?  Asian Americans make up about four percent of the population, but we don’t take up four percent of the bestseller slots. 

I distinctly recall a moment years ago, when I attended my first Romance Writers of America convention.  I looked around the room, where a thousand writers had gathered, and did my usual “race check.”  It may sound weird to some people, but it’s automatic for me (and I suspect it’s true for other minorities as well) to scope out how many non-whites are around.  That night, I counted exactly three Asians, including me.  In a room of 1,000 writers.

So where are we?

Part of the answer can be found in an email I received some months back from an Asian-American man who enjoys my books.  He told me that he works in computer engineering and even though he’s making a great living at it, he hates his job.  He only went into engineering because his parents pushed him into it.  He didn’t want to be an engineer!  His dream as a young man — and it’s still his most heartfelt dream – was to become a fashion designer.  But his parents told him he was nuts, that he’d starve, and that he should choose a career that would pay the bills. 

You know what?  My dad told me essentially the same thing.  “Writing’s a nice hobby,” he said when I told him that what I really, really wanted to do was study journalism.  “But you’ll never make a good living at it.”  Like countless other Asian American parents, he told his kids that science was the way to go. “Choose medicine or engineering and you’ll never starve.”  Not starving is a really big deal among immigrant families.

So I became a doctor.  And so did my brother.

I think of all the budding Asian-American novelists and artists and movie directors and fashion designers who are now toiling unhappily in hospitals or in front of computers.  How many of them would have gone on to win Pulitzer prizes or Academy Awards, had they stuck with their dreams?  How many were forced to shove those dreams aside out of fear that they’d someday starve?

There’s a lot to praise about immigrant values.  My parents taught me the importance of hard work and a top-notch education.  They paid for piano and violin lessons, they filled the house with books, and they instilled in me a love of learning.  But I feel incredibly fortunate that in the end, I listened to my own creative yearnings.  I’m lucky, of course, that my two kids gave me an excuse to finally write my first novel while I was on maternity leave.  But I also made sure I carved out writing time even while I was working as a doctor. I scribbled in the on-call room and on my lunch break.  I stayed up late, after the kids were in bed, to scribble some more.  That’s what you have to do when you first start out writing — you find the time, despite your other jobs, your other responsibilities.  Luckily, I could do it.

I think about that guy who wanted to be a fashion designer, and I don’t see how he can do that now, while holding down an engineering job.  His chance is probably gone forever.  His parents talked him out of it, and I feel sorry for him. 

Maybe in another generation or two, we’ll see more Asian-Americans in the arts.  We just have to stop listening to our parents.

 

 

Over on the blogsite of Jason Pinter, there’s a nice entry on March 30 called “Timing is Everything,” about the importance of choosing just the right month to publish a book.  Jason’s both a thriller novelist as well as an editor, so he knows the business from both sides.  And here’s what he says:

“A few years ago, I was talking with another editor about the next novel from a major bestselling writer. The book was scheduled to come out in several months, and galleys would be arriving soon. The author routinely sold about 400,000 copies in hardcover, and another million in paperback. Yet despite ten bestselling novels and over 40,000,000 copies in print worldwide, the author had never hit #1 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. It wasn’t that his sales didn’t justify it–many authors have hit #1 despite selling far fewer copies–it was that his books always came out in the fall, when the competition was at its fiercest, and more books were competing for almighty consumer dollar.”

Jason’s absolutely right about timing.  If your book comes out the same week that five heavy-hitters have releases, even though your book may sell a lot of copies, you just aren’t going to hit as high on the list.  Fall, in general, is a really tough time, because that’s traditionally when publishers publish their major releases.

Since the release of my first thriller, HARVEST, in 1996, each of my books has been published in the late summer/early fall, when the competition tends to be brutal.  The highest I’ve ever gotten on the NYT list was #3, for THE MEPHISTO CLUB.  I’ve noticed that where you land on the Times list doesn’t necessarily reflect your raw sales.  THE SINNER, for instance, hit #4 on the list while BODY DOUBLE, which sold more copies, didn’t even hit the top 10.  It’s all a matter of which other titles are in the stores that particular week. 

For awhile, publishers who wanted to establish an author as a NYT-bestseller would release them in the slow months — i.e., January through March.  There’d be less competition, and more of a chance to place on the bestseller list.  Unfortunately, it also meant that overall, you sell fewer copies because of lighter traffic through the stores.  You were trading actual sales for the prestige of being a bestseller that month.

With my new book, THE BONE GARDEN, my publisher considered releasing me at a completely different time of the year, and they suggested March.  They wanted to move me into a time slot where I might be able to hit even higher than #3, and I was all for it…

… until they took a closer look at my numbers and realized that, by trying to place higher on the list, I might be sacrificing total sales.  The Christmas season, it turned out, was a period in which I sold quite a few additional books, even though it was months after my book’s release.  If I came out in March, I’d lose that second bump in sales.  So what did I want?  A higher place on the list, or more books sold?

It’s great, of course, to hit high on the list.  It’s a real ego boost to have that label “#1 bestseller” behind your name.  But when you get right down to what the publisher (and the booksellers) really want, it gets down to raw sales.  Do you want to sell 200,000 copies and hit #5 or sell 100,000 and hit #1?

Since you don’t get paid for hitting the list, but you do get paid for selling that extra 100,000 copies, the choice starts to look pretty obvious.

In case you’re wondering what I chose, THE BONE GARDEN is scheduled to go on sale this September.

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And now another photo of one of my books, this time in Sydney, Australia, in front of a native bottlebrush tree.  With many thanks to Sharmaine A. for the photo!

Okay, this is a kick.  I just ran across this article in the UK newspaper, The Evening Standard.  It’s an interview with Elizabeth Hurley: 

 QUEEN OF THE JET SET

It is typical of Elizabeth Hurley’s time management skills that in the week before her English wedding at Sudeley Castle to Indian businessman Arun Nayar – between meetings with her party organiser Peregrine Armstrong-Jones, florist Robert Van Helden and caterer Rhubarb – she set up a giant draughtsman’s easel in her son Damian’s basement nursery to do her placement with Day-Glo Post-Its. As she pondered on whom to sit next to Sir Elton John, Leonard and Evelyn Lauder, Valentino and Prince Pavlos of Greece…  

Guests (at the wedding) included Tom Ford, David Furnish, Leonard and Evelyn Lauder, Trinny Woodall, Tim Jefferies, Imran Khan, India Hicks, various Bollywood stars, Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty and several Indian tycoons such as billionaire Vijay Mallya, known as the ‘King of Good Times’…

Now that Elizabeth and Arun are married, travel will doubtless continue to play an important part in their lives. They are currently ‘arguing’ about whether they should buy a holiday home that is a ‘hot house’ (ie, a beach house in somewhere like Mustique) or a ‘cold house’ (ie, a chalet in St Moritz).

Lying on a private beach in the Maldives or the Caribbean is definitely something Elizabeth has long enjoyed. 

‘I can let him play all day while I am under a palm tree reading a Tess Gerritsen novel. I only read horrid, American crime novels at the moment.’

Wow.  Elizabeth Hurley reads me!  Maybe I can’t hang out on a beach in the Maldives, but my books do.