It’s
my birthday month, and this year I turn fifty-eight. I started writing with the
intent of making it my life’s work when I was eighteen, which means that I’ve
been at this for forty years.
Forty.
Damn.
Years.
I
published my first story in my college’s literary magazine in 1985 when I was
twenty-one. I published my first novel in 2001 when I was thirty-six. (And I
wrote a lot of unpublished stories and novels before I started publishing
regularly.) The story was called “Shadow Play,” and it was a science fiction
tale about a time travel device that allows you to re-experience every moment
of your life. The novel was Dying for It, a work-for-hire humorous
erotic mystery. During most of those years, I taught composition and creative
writing classes as a part-time instructor at various colleges.
Where
am I now, career-wise?
I’ve
traditionally published over fifty novels and seven collections of short
stories. Most of my published work is original dark fantasy and horror, along
with media tie-ins. My fiction has been translated into Russian, Portuguese,
Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, and Turkish. My articles
on writing have appeared in numerous publications, such as Writer’s Digest
and The Writer. I’m a three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award (and
have been nominated three other times as well), I’ve won the HWA’s Mentor of
the Year Award, and I’ve been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award (twice),
the Scribe Award (six times), and the Splatterpunk Award (once). In the fall of
1999, I started teaching as full-time tenure-track professor at Sinclair
College in Dayton, Ohio, and after this semester, I’ll have only seven more
years until I can retire from teaching with full benefits.
(If
you’d like more specifics about my career, you can hit my website at www.timwaggoner.com)
So
when I realized it’s my fortieth anniversary of setting out to be a writer, I
thought I should write a blog to commemorate the occasion. I had no idea what
to say, though. “I’ve written a hell of a long time and published stuff that
some people read and liked. That’s it – let’s hit the bar!”
I
thought about how I see people come into the horror writing community, become
an active part of it for a few years, then vanish. I’ve seen this pattern over
and over. But I’m still here. Maybe, I thought, I might be able to offer
some tips on how I’ve managed to stick it out all these years. So that’s what I
decided to write about.
So
here – in no particular order – are some tips that might help you get through
the long haul.
·
Write with
intention but without attachment to a specific outcome. I got this idea from writer Taylor Grant. The idea is to
write with a specific intention – say, to make a great short story that
presents a new take on vampires – but without being attached to any specific
outcome. This way, so long as you write the story, you’ve succeeded. Whatever
happens afterward – whether or not the story is published, wins awards, hell,
whether or not the damn thing is any good in the first place – doesn’t matter.
You wrote it, you won. Move on to writing something else. If you can manage
this attitude, it can keep you from experiencing negative emotions about
whatever happens to your work after you create it.
·
Shoot for
the moon but don't be crushed if you don't reach it. One of my earliest goals was to become famous enough as a
writer to have a shelf in B. Dalton’s bookstore with my name on it. (B. Dalton
is long gone, but they did have author name labels for people like Stephen
King, Danielle Steele, Isaac Asimov, etc.) Even if B. Dalton’s was still
around, I haven’t become famous enough to get my own name label, and I probably
never will. I often see writers post on social media that in five years they
plan to be making six figures from their writing, have signed a movie option,
have won X amount of awards . . . Aiming for goals like these is fine. Being
crushed when you (most likely) won’t achieve them – at least, not all of them –
is not so fine. You might consider yourself a failure and quit writing. A
career in the arts doesn’t run on a timetable. You aim for what you aim for and
the results are what they are. You need to make your peace with this is you
want to have a sustained career.
·
Focus on
helping others, on contributing to the writing community. It’s too easy to become self-obsessed when you’re a writer.
After all, we spend so much time in our own heads, physically alone when we
write, dreaming of the kind of success we so desperately want. But too much
focus on the self can be unhealthy and lead to depression and self-loathing.
Taking time to focus on others – our family, friends, colleagues – and being a
good literary citizen by connecting to and helping other writers, allows us to remember
that life is not always about us and our writing. Consider mentoring other writers
or volunteering for a writers’ organization. Present workshops at libraries and
rec centers. Offer to be a visiting writer for a school in your area. Help out
and support other writers on social media. Doing any of these things will help
you get out of your head, feel good about yourself, and re-energize you so
you’re ready to hit the keyboard again.
·
Don't make
writing your entire identity.
Some writers have other creative outlets, such as drawing, painting, playing a
musical instrument, knitting . . . Some have hobbies that have nothing to do
with producing creative work, such as birdwatching or amateur astronomy.
Teaching fulfills this function for me, even if what I teach is writing. Plus,
it has the benefit of helping me focus on others instead of myself. The richer
your overall life is, the easier it will be to move past any writing career
setbacks.
·
Learn from
other writers' survival stories. In
my twenties, I joined the GEnie network, one of the first social media
services. Many writers would post about their triumphs, hardships, failures,
and how they deal with them all. I also read as many interviews with writers I
could find for the same reason. I learned a ton about what might lie in store
for me career-wise as the years went on, and I was able to benefit from other
writers’ experiences. I still seek out other writers’ career stories to learn
from them.
·
Everyone
wants to be a star, but if you love your craft above all, you'll be okay with whatever
kind of career you have. I think a
lot about supporting actors in movies, actors who have bit parts, and those who
work as extras. When the credits role, I look at all the names, and I wonder if
the lesser-known (or not-known-at-all) actors are happy with their careers or
if they wish they were stars too, and the fact they aren’t eats at them. I hope
that many of them love acting so much that they feel privileged and happy to
ply their craft and improve it, even if they end up doing dinner theater or
being cast in diarrhea commercials. I think the vast majority of creative
careers of any kind are like those of these actors. I would love to be a
writing star. Who wouldn’t? But I try to focus on my love for the craft and not
worry too much about what size career I’ve got.
·
Don't set
stupid deadlines for yourself. In
my early twenties, I vowed that if I didn’t have a novel published by the time
I was thirty, I’d focus primarily on teaching and just write every once and a
while. Of course, thirty came around and I didn’t have a novel out yet.
However, an agent called on my thirtieth birthday and offered to represent me,
so I figured that was close enough! But making a vow like this is dumb. There
are too many factors in traditional publishing outside your control, and you’re
more likely to fail to reach a goal on your preferred timetable than achieve
it. If you’re going to set deadline-type goals for yourself, make them somewhat
flexible, and don’t beat yourself up or consider yourself a failure if it’s
going to take more time to get where you want to be.
·
Aim for a
life in writing. I tell this to students all the
time. There’s so little about the publishing aspect of writing that we can
control. We can aim for artistic, critical, and financial success, but there’s
no guarantee how much – if any – of these things we will get. I often use a
sports metaphor. Very few athletes make it to the pros or the Olympics. But
there are many, many ways to be involved – to have a life – in sports.
I’ve had a life in writing for forty years, and by that measure, I’m a massive
success. How many people in this world manage to create a decades-long life for
themselves focused entirely on the thing they love most? If you can learn to
think like this, career setbacks won’t hurt so much, and they won’t stop you
from writing.
·
Learn to
accept the limits of your control.
Or at least learn to make your peace with it somehow. We can’t control the publishing
industry. We can’t control how editors and readers respond to our work. We can’t
control the circumstances of the world around us. And even if we do our best to
stay physically and mentally healthy, we’re still going to get sick and injured
at times. We need to do our best to keep working in whatever circumstances we
find ourselves in, and depending on what those circumstances are, we might
write more or less, and we might need to take a break from writing for a bit. Instead
of beating ourselves up because we can’t change our circumstances (at least not
easily and swiftly), we should congratulate ourselves for adapting and
adjusting as need be.
·
It's a
marathon not a sprint. It’s a cliché,
sure, but that doesn’t make it any less true. There’s a reason it’s called a
writing career.
·
Envy is the
writer's disease. We learn by observing others and
copying them. We do it as babies and continue doing it all our lives. But if we
compare ourselves to others and start wondering why we can’t do what they do,
why we don’t get what they get, we eventually stew in our own jealousy and
resentment and become poisoned by it. Try to focus on what you do have
instead of what you don’t. It’s okay to be a little envious of other
writers’ triumphs – it’s only human. But don’t let that envy grow and spread,
eventually killing your love for your art.
·
What's your
bare minimum for success? People tend
to focus on their most ambitious goals for success – making millions of dollars
from their writing, being world-renowned, and winning at least one Pulitzer
Prize. They see anything less than achieving these lofty goals as failure. Instead,
ask yourself what’s the least amount of success that will make you happy in
your writing career. Regularly publishing your work in venues large of small,
traditional or indie? Having a readership (of whatever size) that appreciates
your work? Continuing to develop and grow as a writer over the years? Whatever
your minimum for success is, there’s a greater chance you’ll achieve it, and a smaller
chance you’ll view yourself as a failure. Bonus: Anything you achieve beyond minimum
success is an extra gift from the universe.
·
Determine
what's most important for you: the craft, artistic and critical success,
popularity, money. Accept this about yourself. Your priorities as a writer can change over the years.
Hell, they can change from day to day, from project to project. But once you
figure out what’s most important for you to achieve in your career, the more
likely you’ll be able to gauge what success means for you. I would love to be a
hugely popular writer who makes a ton of money from his fiction. But evidently
I don’t love the prospect that much because I’ve never taken steps
toward achieving this goal. I don’t try to create bestselling work. Hell, I don’t
try to make my writing as commercial as it could be. I write things because
they interest me, I think they’ll be fun to do, I think I’ll learn something
from doing them, and I think (or at least hope) that I’ll grow as a writer and
as a person. It’s not always easy for me to remember that these are my
priorities – especially when I see other writers posting on social media about
their commercial successes and I begin to compare my career to theirs – but when
I eventually remind myself of what I truly need from my writing career, I tell
myself I’m doing all right, and I can get back to work.
·
Save good
words about your writing. When I run
across a good review of one of my books or a positive comment someone makes
about me or my writing on social media, I save it. Sometimes I add it to the
list of promotional blurbs I keep, but sometimes I just take a screenshot of it
with my phone. When I start to feel down about my writing career, I look at
these comments and remind myself that there are people who think my writing is
good and who enjoy it. I have a terrible time believing anything good
about myself or my work, but reading positive comments like these helps me not
listen so closely to my own self-doubts.
·
Keep making.
When I’ve experienced a career
setback or have a lull between projects or just feel shitty about myself and my
career, I tell myself that all that matters is I keep making. When I was a kid,
I made stuff all the time. I drew pictures, created intricate dramatic
scenarios to act out with my toys, made my own comics . . . I did these things
solely for the joy of creating. These days when I have a setback, I might write
something I don’t normally do, like a one-act play or a poem. I might get a new
piece of artwork to hang in my office. I might read an interview with or watch
a documentary about a different kind of artist – a dancer, a singer, a painter
– to learn how they make what they make. Sometimes I think of myself as a maker
instead of a writer, and as long as I’m making, I’m expressing the deepest,
truest part of myself, and that’s what matters most.
And above all . . .
·
Enjoy the
ride. Writers can get caught up in all the
business concerns of publishing their work to the point where they forget why
they started writing in the first place. I started because I love stories of
all kinds, and I wanted to make my own. I had so many ideas inside me that I
had to let them out. When I started writing with an aim of making a career out
of it, I began trying to consciously improve my skills, and constantly bumping
up against the limits of my ability could be frustrating. But I even loved the
frustrations. But when I start to focus too much on what kind of stories I should
write to make money, increase my audience, or win awards – or when I get caught
up in the negativity of the latest publishing drama on social media – I lose
sight of the ultimate reason I write: to have fun. I write for me, to
fulfill myself as an artist and a human being, and to share what I create with
people who (hopefully) appreciate it. I write for all the wonderful experiences
associated with it – and for all the not-so-wonderful ones that teach me more
about myself. And when I start to focus too much on what I haven’t achieved
yet, and may never achieve, I forget to enjoy myself. And if we can’t enjoy the
creating our art and living an artistic life, what’s the point?
I’ve had so many wonderful experiences over the last forty
years of my writing career. I’ve grown from a struggling beginner to a competent
professional who regularly publishes. I’ve met so many wonderful people over
the years – other writers, readers, editors, publishers, agents, artists,
filmmakers – who love writing as much as I do. I’ve challenged myself, battled my
own self-doubts and anxieties, and while I’ve learned a ton about my craft, I’ve
learned far more about what it means to be Tim Waggoner.
And hopefully I’ll live a few more decades so I can learn
even more.
Want
to hear how other writers have made – and survived – the long haul? Then check
out these books by veteran authors!
·
End of the
Road, Briane Keene
·
Fear in a
Handful of Dust, Gary A. Braunbeck
·
For
Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small-Press Publisher, Jason Sizemore
·
The Horror .
. . The Horror: An Autobiography, Rick
Hautala
·
On Writing:
A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King
·
Shooting
Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide, Lucy A. Snyder
·
Southern-Fried
and Horrified, Ronald Kelly
·
Starve
Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life, Nick Mamatas
·
A Writer
Prepares, Lawrence Block
·
A Writer’s
Tale, Richard Laymon
·
The Writing
Life, Jeff Strand
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
Planet Havoc: A Zombicide Novel
Review copies of my forthcoming novel Planet Havoc:
Zombicide Invader are available at NetGalley! I’d appreciate it if you’d
give the novel a look and leave an honest review: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/245927
Speaking of reviews, early ones for Planet Havoc
have been good, and Jonathan Maberry was kind enough to read an advanced copy
and provide a blurb!
“PLANET HAVOC is the best of all worlds –space
adventure, military SF, snarky humor, and zombies! Tim Waggoner brings the pain
and all the jolts in this rollicking action horror thriller!” – Jonathan
Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of the Joe Ledger thrillers and KAGEN THE
DAMNED
Planet Havoc
is due out in April and is available for preorder. Here’s a synopsis:
Scoundrels and soldiers band together to survive the
onslaught of alien-zombies spreading across the galaxy in this riotous
adventure.
A deserted R&D facility tempts the hungry new
Guild, Leviathan, into sending a team to plunder its valuable research. The
base was abandoned after a neighboring planet was devastated by an outbreak of
Xenos – alien zombies – but that was a whole planet away... When the Guild ship
is attacked by a quarantine patrol, both ships crash onto the deserted world.
Only it isn’t as deserted as they hope: a murderous new Xeno threat awakens,
desperate to escape the planet. Can the crews cooperate to destroy this new
foe? Or will they be forced to sacrifice their ships and lives to protect the
galaxy?
Amazon Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Havoc-Zombicide-Invader-Novel/dp/1839081244/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1635525512&sr=1-3
Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Havoc-Zombicide-Invader-Novel-ebook/dp/B09FKJ98R8/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=tim+waggoner&qid=1635525512&s=books&sr=1-3
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081248
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081255
We Will Rise
My next horror/dark fantasynovel is due out this July from Flame
Tree Press!
In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear,
manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical
undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits
attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more
recruits to their spectral ranks.
A group of survivors come together after the initial
attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they
make it out of Echo Hill alive? And if so, will they still be sane? Or will
they die and join the ranks of the vengeful dead?
You can preorder the book here:
Flame Tree Press: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/we-will-rise-isbn-9781787585249.html
Amazon Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/We-Will-Rise-Tim-Waggoner/dp/1787585220/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1635525326&sr=1-1
Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/We-Will-Rise-Tim-Waggoner-ebook/dp/B09JPF5XZD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=11ZC2NOOC3S1J&keywords=tim+waggoner+we+will+rise&qid=1635593108&sprefix=tim+waggoner+we+wi%2Caps%2C192&sr=8-1
Amazon Hardcover
https://www.amazon.com/We-Will-Rise-Tim-Waggoner/dp/1787585247/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=tim+waggoner&qid=1635525512&s=books&sr=1-2
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585225
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585263
Barnes & Noble Hardcover
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585249
A Little Aqua Book of Marine Tales eBook
This originally appeared in a limited hardcover
edition as one of Borderland Press’ legendary Little Book series, but now it’s
available in a more affordable eBook edition! It’s a collection of stories all
centered around the theme of water. I almost drowned when I was nine, so water
has played a significant role in much of my horror fiction over the years.
Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Aqua-Book-Marine-Stories-ebook/dp/B09NH7Q5W6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=a%20little%20aqua%20book%20of%20marine%20stories&qid=1639322122&sr=8-1&fbclid=IwAR3GiP0KsE66ksCqUzAdXtzkgFRjafhkN4JIvnaTnzYBnxMnn1Z2UuyhvNg
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-little-aqua-book-of-marine-stories-tim-waggoner/1140776473?ean=2940160937168
WANT TO STALK ME IRL?
Here are the cons I’m planning on
attending this year.
Stokercon. Denver, Colorado. May 12-15,
2022.
World Fantasy Convention 2022, New Orleans. Nov. 3-6,
2022.
WANT
TO STALK ME VIRTUALLY?
Want to follow me on social media? Here’s
where you can find me:
Website: www.timwaggoner.com
Twitter: @timwaggoner
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9
Instagram: tim.waggoner.scribe
Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZEz6_ALPrV3tdC0V3peKNw
