Stick With It or Burn Out?
Stick With It or Burn Out?
Stories Scattered on the Cutting Room Floor
I live in St. Louis and, last weekend, visited the Arch for the first time. I took a picture that captured the way I enjoy looking at things, and I sent that photograph to my mom. In this analogy, Mom is the audience.
MOM: What's that?
ME: The St Louis Arch.
MOM: Oh.
Oh?… Oh? What is that? My rating out of five stars? I get an Oh!?
ME: Clara took one, too. I'll send you that.
MOM: Great picture.
David Fincher read the screenplay of Seven, the same story we saw play out on screen, and called his agent saying the ending was unbelievable. That’s when his agent realized they’d sent him the wrong draft. What he read was the first draft. The studio wasn’t going to make a movie with that ending.
We came that close to being denied the greatest unboxing video of all time.
The power of independence is the ability to write anything we choose, but we make a trade-off for that power. Studio executives make these calls because movies cost a lot, like many tens of dollars, and if a movie flops, it can’t be because they took a risk. They make safe decisions with a veneer of logic. It preserves the presumption that this is how you make a popular movie.
When you make anything you want, the risk is greater. It could flop hard. It could also catch the heart of an audience in way no safe bet can.
Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was rejected 121 times.
Substack is giving me the chance to share the oddities I write: a retelling of the passion week with the character from Winnie-the-Pooh; a fantasy told through jumbled passages from Moby Dick; and a rewrite of The Mummy (2017). None of these are logical choices to write. They aren’t market driven.
Does that mean if we follow our passion we must turn our back on the market and accept that our highest achievement will be a few hundred views in a newsletter?
For that statistic about Pirsig’s book, I reviewed several cases of famous book that were rejected many times. In the context of these discussions, we’re often told we have to believe in our work. If Pirsig hadn’t persevered, his novel wouldn’t be the classic it is today, but many writers persevere. Perseverance is no guarantee of being published—all we can say is that giving up is a guarantee we won’t be.
What we need, before perseverance, is hope.
We need hope that there’s a way forward and goal to be achieved.
I didn’t do much right when I self-published before, and I’ve chronicled my studies and efforts here in order to push myself forward, to use Substack as the foundation to build my audience and share my fiction.
How I’d rate my success would depend on what goal we’re measuring. The ultimate goal is to self-publish my WIP, The House of Haunted Women, and to see it do well. In that respect, I’ve done poorly, as I’ve given all my time to this Substack project and none to writing it’s meant to support.
However, that was intentional.
I didn’t accidentally ignore my book for the last six months but gave myself intentionally to building something new—whatever that would turn out to be. Measured by that goal, I’m doing very well. Bookmotion.pro promises a new future for my efforts here and is plunging me into the depths of what it means to market a book.
If your curious about the present state of Bookmotion, I’ll share details in the afterward.
As for now, let me share my current thoughts on how we decide what we write: everything is marketing. If you’re selecting your material well, that’s a big step forward in marketing. If you select subgenres and styles that are hard to sell, it will never stop being hard—but that doesn’t mean you can’t choose the journey that crosses rough terrain. More than a business, more than art, this is our life, and we must choose for ourselves the life worth living.
The Big Reveal
Where does this hope come from? What is the secret to perseverance? What one element, if missing, is the biggest predictor of burn out?
A sense of progress.
This is the blessing and curse of metrics. They can provide that sense of progress or a sense of stagnation. We can work hard if we feel ourselves moving toward the goal, but if we feel nothing we do matters, it’s hard to stick with it.
Some key points:
Remember that growth is slow in the beginning but it gets better
Understand which metrics are important at your current stage. Not everything is measured by a graph. We often see new, tiny Substacks talking about the importance of the relationships they’re forming, and they’re absolutely correct.
Vanity metrics can prevent burnout in the short-term, but pinpoint the progress that moves you toward your goals. Chasing the wrong things will backfire when you realize your important numbers are stagnant.
For help with subscriber growth, gaining reviews, and increased book sales, see the afterward.
Onward all,
Thaddeus Thomas
Afterward:
Bookmotion services are for my subscribers—eventually that means paid subscribers. I’ve been focused on that being Literary Salon, but I’ve realized I should offer the same to paid subscribers of ThaddeusThomas.com. The suggested paid level will be the $50 founding level, but access to services will be available at whatever paid level you need. You can enter your own price, all the way down to $30 a year.
The package I offer now comes with managed Bookfunnel. On your on, Bookfunnel would cost you $100 a year, but you get it through me, managed on your behalf, for $80 a year. Furthermore, that same $80 gives you access to more services at no additional cost. Right now, that can be advertising on Facebook or Bookbub or ARC promotion through BookSirens.
Right now, it’s $150 worth of value for $110-$130, and that value will increase as we prove ourselves and are granted greater discounts. In that regard, we need to prove ourselves with BookSirens through five successful books: professional-looking cover and content that connects with its audience.
No matter how much value I squeeze out of that $80, though. It will only go so far. The next step will be more expensive, one-time packages that cannot fit within the $80 structure.
In November, I’ll be putting together Promotion Stacks. These are promotional pushes for your book, pointing to your Amazon account, where your book appears with a different promoter each day for several sequential days.
Also in November, I’ll start rotating people through open Bookfunnel spots. You can get your first 25 subscribers for free. Let me know if you’re interested.
Love the photo! And the insights.
I like your photo.