Authors, You Cannot Do Everything Yourself (And You Shouldn't Feel Like You Have To)

Authors are often the subject of a lot of mythmaking, and this can lead to problems when people actually try their hand at the profession because they're trying to live up to a standard that was never real in the first place. For example, most books are not, in fact, the sole genius of a single creator who acted in absolute isolation until they gave birth to this beautiful brain baby, giving this textual gift to the world!

No... most of us have help in some way, shape, or form to make our books the best they can be. So stop punishing yourself for not being able to do something alone when this profession has always been dependent on team effort.

Seriously... everybody needs somebody.

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Let's Go Back To Walden Pond

One of the most romanticized versions of an author that I've come across is how people thought of Thoreau in regards to Walden Pond. Just a man, alone, out in the wilderness getting in touch with his inner creativity, and working to let it flow. It's held up as this idea of what being a writer should be, and of the sacrifice and isolation that the profession demands of people who create truly great work.

The problem is, like so many myths, it's bullshit.

While Thoreau was sitting out in the shack, which was on a friend's property, his mom was doing his laundry and making his lunches. He wasn't some literary genius who was out in nature, cut off from society while he struggled to realize his artistic vision... he was some guy who had a solid support structure who was given the time and permission to write.

And that's just one example.

Though this may not be the most direct example of what I'm talking about, the truth is that none of us are out here doing things all by our lonesome. Even if we're the ones putting the words on the page, there are usually a lot of other people who help get a book published and out to the masses. Maybe it's your friend that helps you work through plot holes, or your writers' group who gave you encouragement and assistance in cleaning up certain passages. It might be your beta readers who caught your historical inaccuracies, your editor who got rid of all your dangling participals, your cover artist, your layout person, your marketing planner... anyone who helped lend a hand or a shoulder to help you push this book up the hill!

Can you do some of these jobs yourself? Or might there be certain positions you don't need for your book? Sure, everyone's process is unique! However, successful books are rarely the product of a single set of fingerprints, and it's okay to admit that.

You aren't less of a writer because you paid an editor to look over your manuscript. It's normal for writers to commission their covers during self publishing, or to have their publisher create a book cover if they're being traditionally published. Most of us actively work with other people to help figure out some kind of promotion plan for our books, if not outright paying for a book tour to help us get the word out about what we're doing (assuming you don't have a publisher that's taking care of that for you).

No man is an island, and the authors who literally handle every, single aspect of a book by themselves are the exceptions that prove the rule. While there might be one name on the cover, the credits page inside, and the dedication, make it clear that most of us had a lot of help along the way... even if it was just someone doing our laundry and making us chicken sandwiches from time to time.

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That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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