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By Root 1124 0

to a broad range of readers, not just to a tiny elite. (Though I will cheerfully maintain that elites deserve their reads, too, "elite" and "bestseller" don't usually occur in the same sentence for an obvious logical reason.) Books with legs usually need to be books that sell themselves, that people will recommend to each other; clever or expensive publicity can boost a book up onto bestseller lists for a moment, but only the story itself can keep it there for any length of time. There is also the question of cracking that critical mass, of getting enough people recommending it to each other (or arguing about it) that other readers become curious just because they've heard about this thing six times in two weeks in several completely different conversations, and start to actually remember it well enough to go look for it.

Some of a writer's necessary work lies midway between art and commerce, as in learning how to deal with editors and agents and contracts and business etiquette (many writers have no business background, and unfortunately it shows). Paranoia is certainly one of the pitfalls that up-and-coming writers need to avoid. No editor is trying to steal your work, really. It is perhaps also wise to avoid buying too blindly into the "whine and cheese" fests some writers indulge in. Dissing one's publisher, agent, or other professional colleague in public is as unappetizing to listen to as someone dissing their ex-spouse, and can lead the uninitiated newbie into mistaking as adversarial, parts of the publication process that are, in fact, best accomplished in a cooperative spirit. It's a good idea for any writer, though, to become aware of what level of sales constitutes success for one's chosen genre, so as to avoid either inflated expectations or selling oneself short. "How far is up?" can be a confusing question to answer.

I've discovered as my career advances that "take the money and run" is not an option for a responsible writer. By the time one's latest book arrives on bookstore shelves, a lot of other folks have bet their own time, money, and reputation on its success, only starting with its purchasing editor and publisher. The book needs to succeed for them, as well. So I've discovered that some degree of financial independence doesn't actually free me from needing to compete, after all, and that I still care.

Which brings me to authoring. Which is another whole job, demanding yet another skill-set.

While in normal speech "author" and "writer" are used interchangeably, I've found it handy to hijack the terms in order to make a useful distinction. Using the two synonyms gives me a way to talk about two separate aspects of a writing career: the actual sweat and uncertainty and frustration and joy of writing, which no one sees (and which would be very boring to watch); and the promotion, which is where the author gets out in public, but which has nothing to do with writing and can sometimes, for the shy or low-energy writer, be actively detrimental to creativity. The promotional/"author" side involves things like interviews, book tours, convention or speaking engagements, Net-based promotion, writing about one's writing (as I'm doing here), answering fan mail, and the like.

The people who imagine that writing is a glamorous profession tend to be looking at the "author" side of things; reasonably enough, since that's the most visible, and when a writer is out in public like that, he or she is usually trying to look as attractive as possible, in hopes of luring readers to their prose. At home we are much grubbier.

There are moments when one is "only" an author, books tours for example. I certainly get no writing done on book tours. All my attention is taken up with not missing planes, trying not to get sick from the travel stress, trying to pay close attention to a rapid succession of people, and never, ever losing my cool with a reader, even if it's the thirtieth time I've been asked the same question that week. After about the third stop I can get pretty tired of listening to myself. And I develop nightmares