Several months ago I wrote here about how an aspiring author had approached me for ideas about The Next Big Thing. He figured that if he could predict what the cultural zeitgeist would be like two or three years from now, he’d be able to hit—or even the start—the trend. He wanted to discuss things like the Tea Party movement (would that mean readers are yearning for freedom from perceived tyranny?), or a counter movement (would readers be concerned about the rise of extremism?), or any number of other things. This guy had consulted political science professors for their predictions, and now he wanted mine.

I knew it was a silly idea right away, of course, and I told him so (gently)—but then I immediately fell into a related trap. I wrote a blog about dystopia, trying to explain why it had become so hot.  My preferred hypothesis was that high school was dystopian, so YA readers could relate strongly:

“Dystopian fiction is almost always about oppression and control, and there is no group of Americans who views themselves as more oppressed and controlled than teenagers…. They are in a very structured environment, moving every hour at the ring of a bell to a different room where they learn things they’re required to learn, whether they want to or not. Depending on their school, they might not be able to wear what they want, sit where they want, or even set foot off campus during a certain period of time. After school they may work at a job which gives them responsibility, but still no real choices–they can use their minimum wage salary to buy some consumer goods or some fast food, but they can’t use that small amount of money to change their situation in life. At home they have to follow their parents’ rules, continue studying things they don’t appreciate, and do chores–forced labor–for a system they have little or no say in (kind of a taxation-without-representation scenario).”

And I referenced my brother’s blog on the topic, where he hypothesized:

“Dystopia is huge right now, especially in YA. This is probably due to the fact that we live in one–or, more correctly, this is due to the fact that YA readers are finally paying close enough attention to realize that we live in one.”

And I referenced author Paolo Bacigalupi:

“I suspect that young adults crave stories of broken futures because they themselves are uneasily aware that their world is falling apart.”

All of these things make sense, and are perfectly reasonable explanations about why we like dystopian fiction. But I think they also leave out one huge point: Why Now?

My explanation about high school makes some sense, but haven’t teenagers been in that sort of situation for centuries? Sure, you could argue that maybe there’s more dystopian electronic surveillance these days, but schools are also a lot less strict than they were even thirty years ago.

Dan’s and Paolo’s hypothesis—that the world is becoming more dystopian—is also kind of questionable from a “Why Now?” perspective. The Cold War felt pretty dystopian, always living in the fear of war and apocalypse. And while the 90’s may not have seen as much foreign conflict (well, American involvement in foreign conflict) there were still the daily freak outs about gang wars (which share common themes with a lot of current dystopia). So while we may now feel like things are worse today (which may or may not be true), we’ve always felt that things were pretty terrible. So, why is dystopian big now?

The answer, of course, is that there’s no good answer. I think my hypothesis is fine and Dan’s is fine and dozen others are fine. A lot of it probably has to do with The Hunger Games being a really great book—readers and authors weren’t so much feeling the sting of dystopian sentiments, but just wanting to relive the experience of The Hunger Games (though that leads to the question of why The Hunger Games was written and published). And there are probably hundreds more tiny, untraceable influences.

The thing that’s got me thinking about this subject—about our inability to conclusively explain (and especially predict) trends—is an amazing new book I read, Everything is Obvious: *Once You Know The Answer. The premise of the book is captured succinctly in the subtitle: “How Common Sense Has Failed Us.” The author, Duncan Watts, lays out the case (in painful detail) how common sense is great at helping with the ‘here and now’, but trying to apply common sense to larger, complex issues—like business or politics—can often lead to spectacular failures (due to all manner of cognitive biases and logical fallacies and misinterpretations of data).

The book is fantastic, and I want to talk all about it. Reading it is almost a religious awakening—you realize how little you really know, and how many mistakes you make ALL THE TIME. I’ll have to save most of it for later, but the part that got me thinking about trends is this: The Mona Lisa.

Watts discusses how the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world, and currently the highest valued (currently estimated at as much as $700 million dollars!) and yet its fame and value was completely unpredictable. From a skill perspective, it’s certainly high quality, but no higher than other da Vinci masterpieces (or higher than works by some of the other masters). As for subject matter, it’s just a portrait of an anonymous woman—mysterious, yes, but there are hundreds or thousands of portraits of anonymous women, even by other masters. So what accounts for it?

The book explains a bit of the rise to fame, particularly that it was stolen in 1911—it was considered great at the time, but certainly not as much as today—and how that theft sparked notoriety and nationalistic fervor. As its notoriety grew, it became the subject of parody, and then the target of political vandalism, all of these little events snowballing until the Mona Lisa became the most visited painting in the world.

And Watt’s point is this: just because we can kind of explain this popularity doesn’t mean we could have predicted it. The same goes for Harry Potter or Twilight or The Da Vinci Code—or dystopia: With the benefit of hindsight we can look back and try to hypothesize how something became popular (though even that’s mostly speculation), but when we authors are in the writing trenches, it’s virtually impossible to predict what will be hot two years from now.

So what’s the takeaway? Two things: First, write what you want. You’re not going to predict what will be big, so you might as well write what you enjoy. Second, get it out of your mind that there’s a magic publishing bullet. That was the whole mindset of that aspiring author I mentioned at the beginning: That he could outthink the publishing industry and skyrocket to fame—that his idea/theme/genre would guarantee him success.

Just write a good book.

Let’s start with a disclaimer. I think self-publishing is a viable form of publishing. There have been many cases where self-published authors have done amazingly well, and those stories seem to be growing at an exponential rate. And, I think there are certain circumstances where self-publishing might not be just a good alternative but actually a better alternative to traditional publishing.

So, let’s get that out of the way. This blog is not an anti-self-publishing piece. Instead, it’s a word of caution.

Articles describing the glories of self-publishing are popping up every day. Technology and infrastructure has advanced to the point where it’s perfectly possible for someone to present a book to the world and have it selling hundreds of thousands of copies in just a few months. This has happened, and it will continue to happen.

Combine that success with the woes of the traditional publishing routes. Disruptive technologies and waning readership have hurt both publishers and booksellers. The poor economy has made publishers skittish about accepting new, untested authors. Agents are more and more in demand. Contracts are harder and harder to get.

Looking at those last two paragraphs it seems like self-publishing might be the best way to go, right?

Here’s my worry:

Publishing has always been hard. It’s always been a struggle to rise through the slushpile, whether that slush was with an agent or a publisher. It’s always taken a long time, and it’s been a fight the entire time. Authors write and rewrite that first chapter, paragraph and sentence to get their submission seen.

And then it gets rejected anyway, so you write another book and you send that one out. And it gets rejected. Authors wore rejections as a badge of honor. At one time there was even an award (riffing off the Writers of the Future award) called Writers With No Future, where the winner was whoever could produce the most rejection letters, by weight.

This isn’t to say that rejections are wonderful. But rejections make you work harder. They make you go back to your manuscript and revise, or rewrite, or throw it away entirely and write something even better. The submission and rejection process is the fiery furnace that refines your writing, removing the impurities and leaving the gold.

While there are always stories like Stephenie Meyer, who sold her first novel, there are many many more stories like my friend Brandon Sanderson, who sold his sixth novel (and at that point he was already working on his thirteenth). My brother, Dan Wells, sold his sixth novel. One new author whose story I love is Brodi Ashton: she sold a three-book deal to Balzer and Bray for lots of money after only two days on submission! Of course, that was only after being rejected by 92 agents, after her first book with that agent didn’t sell, and after she got a new agent.

The moral of the story: success almost always comes after a long, hard fight.

Aspiring authors will inevitably think: but that sounds terrible! Why would I ever want to go through that?  The answer is just what I said above: the struggle is valuable, because it makes you work harder, and it makes your writing better.

So, what does this have to do with self-publishing?

When you finish your first manuscript, you probably think it’s pretty good. Maybe it is. I’m not saying it’s impossible to create something great on the first try (though I am saying it’s really, really rare).

So, you take that first manuscript and you shop it around. You submit to agents, and you get some rejections and it really sucks.  And then you turn to the internet, and you read that some other author has sold five hundred thousand ebooks by self-publishing! You read that another author made $200,000 in a single month! Man, screw this traditional publishing crap! Self-publishing is both easier and more lucrative!

And maybe you’ll make a million dollars. It’s definitely possible.

But unless you have gone through all the years of work and refinement and revisioning and rewriting, then odds are you won’t. Because it’s the work that makes your writing good, and good writing is what sells.

Again, I’m not anti-self-publishing. But to me it has all the dangers of a get-rich-quick scheme: It’s very tempting, because you see other people who have done it and made a lot of money; it’s easy to get into; it seems like an appealing alternative to a very difficult path. And, just like a get-rich-quick scheme, 99% of people who try it won’t get rich. Some will lose money. Some will get their name forever plastered on a poorly written book, and spend the rest of their career hiding their past.

So this is not a blog to tell you not to self-publish. It’s just to warn you:Be wary of the hype.  If you’re going into self-publishing, you have to be a great writer—as good and polished as if you’d worked your way through years of rejections and rewrites. And you have to be a great businessperson, because you don’t have professional editors, marketers, salespeople, accountants, graphic designers, distributors and retailers in your corner. It’s all you.

If you can handle that, then dive right in. The changes to the industry really are amazing, and the right person with the right book can be very successful. Just know what you’re getting into, and make sure you’re ready before you do it.

Thirteen months ago I finished graduate school and entered the job market. I spent seven of those months unemployed, and during that unemployment I essentially wrote full-time (when I wasn’t looking for work).  It was during this time that I wrote Variant, found an agent, and sold the book. And I think I’ve learned more about writing and publishing in the last year than I’d learned in the nine previous.

Here are five big lessons from the last year:

1. Don’t be afraid to kill (or abandon) your darlings

In late August I finally decided to shelve a book that I’ve been working on for three years.  I liked the book–I really liked it–but the reason I’d been working on it for so long is because it just wasn’t working. I kept revising, changing the characters ages and motivations, changing the point of view and tense, because, dangit, I was going to get it right eventually!

The guys on the Writing Excuses podcast use the phrase “kill your darlings” to mean that sometimes you have to get rid of something–a scene, a character, a plot–that you really love because it’s just not right for your project.  Being the nerdy business person I am (my grad school was an MBA) I think of it in terms of sunk costs.

Here’s a quick primer: a sunk cost is cost which has already been paid and cannot be recovered. In economic theory, you shouldn’t let sunk costs affect future decision making; you should only think about future costs. In a simple example, let’s say you bought a non-refundable movie ticket, but you then hear that the movie is terrible, offensive, and even out-of-focus. According to economic theory, your ticket is a sunk cost–you’ve already paid it and you can’t possibly get the money back. So, when you’re deciding whether or not to see the movie, the fact that you’ve already paid for it should not affect your decision making; going to see the terrible movie just because you’ve already paid for it would be a stupid decision.

Behavioral economics, however, shows that we do this kind of thing all the time–we let sunk costs affect our decision making.

In the case of my book, the sunk cost was my time. I didn’t want to abandon this book solely because I’d spent three years working on it. I didn’t have any good ideas to fix it, but I felt so invested in it that I had trouble letting go. If it hadn’t been for an intervention of sorts (my brother challenging me to write a book in two months) then I’d probably still be plugging away at that thing.

2. Network Be Social

I hate the term ‘networking’. I think that the concept is, on it’s face, Machevellian and selfish. It sounds like you’re only being social to get ahead; your friendships only exist to help you climb the ladder.

So, let’s not use that word. Instead, let’s say “Be Social”.

In the Writing Excuses podcast I was recently interviewed on, Janci Patterson and I were talking about how we broke in to the national market. Both of us found our agents through friends. In fact, almost everyone I know who has an agent found them through some sort of networking social connection: friends, conventions, conferences, writing groups, pitch sessions, etc. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to get published without networking social connections, but it’s a heck of a lot easier.

(Just, again, don’t treat it like networking. Go to conferences and writing groups and have fun, and make real–non-selfish/networky–friendships.)

3. Revise

I wrote Variant with the intent of having it complete before World Fantasy, so that my brother, Dan Wells (a nationally-published horror writer), could introduce me to agents and editors and I’d have something complete to send them.

So, with World Fantasy as the deadline, I worked on the book every day, revising and polishing. I have a friend who was also going to the convention, and was also working on a book. She finished her draft and then declared she was done and was going to work on something else. I suggested to her that she might want to do some revisions and clean-up but she refused, saying that it was good enough, and, if she wrote quickly, she might be able to take a second book to the convention too.

Now, I’m not saying that the reason that I’m published and she still isn’t is because she didn’t revise. I haven’t read her manuscript so I have no idea what it’s like. It might be great. However, I will say that if I had taken that attitude–that it was good enough and I didn’t need to keep working on it–Variant would have never even gotten an agent, let alone sold.

(To be perfectly honest, I regret this with my first two novels. Yes, they were published, but I hate to go back and read through them because of the simple, obvious errors that they are riddled with. I wish I could go back in time and scrub them thoroughly.)

4. Be cheerfully flexible

My dad has a philosophy that he cites all the time: “Be cheerfully flexible”. He learned it during his days as a stage manager, working with a ton of enthusiasticly creative producers, directors, actors and designers. As the stage manager, he had to gather all of the creative ideas and actually implement them in the real world. And he learned that he could produce the best final product, with the least stress to himself and others, if he simply became cheerfully flexible.

When my agent, Sara Crowe, started sending Variant out to publishers, it very quickly started building up rejections. And, more importantly, several of the publishers were rejecting it for the same reasons. Sara gave me the option: let it ride and see what other publishers said, or correct some of the manuscript’s problems. I corrected the problems.

We sent it out again, and it was rejected several more times, sometimes with big, detailed letters from editors who effectively said “We LOVE it, but it needs to be completely rewritten”. In fact, Erica at HarperTeen–who is now my editor–rejected it.

Finally, after a third round, I decided to rewrite. This was more than a simple revision–it was completely changing the final third of the book and removing a major character completely. However, within two weeks of finishing that revision, I had four offers, including the one I accepted with Harper.  I could have easily told Sara to keep sending out the manuscript, that someone somewhere was going to like it, and that I was a great artiste who didn’t compromise. And I’d still be unpublished.

5. There is no magic bullet, but getting published is possible.

Something I’ve thought about today while I’ve been writing this blog is that I know several authors who have done/are doing all the things I’ve listed above–and they’re still not published. However, I have no doubt that they eventually will be.

Over the past ten years I’ve watched many friends get published and become successful. Two things have struck me. First, they work like crazy. Second, they never give up.

Ten years ago I was in a writing group of five people. Of that group, three of us have gone on to get published nationally: Brandon Sanderson has been wildly successful, both with his own epic fantasy and as the writer of the final Wheel of Time books. Dan Wells, my brother, has a three-book deal with Tor writing critically-acclaimed horror. And here’s what the three of us have in common: Brandon was working on this thirteenth book when he finally sold one (which happened to be the sixth one that he wrote). Dan also sold his sixth. And Variant is my seventh.

In other words, keep at it. Getting published is hard work, but it’s definitely possible.