Running out of time

Trying to get published young gave me real tools with which to envision a future

The dream was to get published at age 16 and break records, or something. Then the years passed and the benchmark moved. 17, 18, 19, and so on. It was a mindset that produced tons of anxiety whenever I dwelled too long on my publishing journey—but time’s running out! How will I ever get there in time—and its eventual death was only partial.

This year I want to sign with an agent. This year I want a book deal. Everything was always better the sooner it might happen. Had I started this journey at age 40 instead I suspect I’d still have thought that sooner was better. But there’s no time limit on getting published, and the writer you are 5 years from now will likely be a better writer than the one you are today. Some who get published young are mainly just lucky, and some have been grinding just as long and hard as people twice their age. The age part doesn’t matter, I’ll say that again, the age part doesn’t matter. It’s the craft part that does. And while I want to unequivocally state that you should not rush yourself into publishing, I also want to talk about why that pressure was useful to me. 

Trying to get published young turned a dream into a reality I could work toward, gave me real tools with which to envision a future. The wanting of it all made me figure out how to make it happen. It pushed me to write queries, research the industry, gain some familiarity with how it all worked. It’s what introduced me to publishing at large, a field I now work in and may never have taken a second look at if I didn’t know about it from trying to get published. Writing a query is a valuable tool when writing a book, and understanding the industry meant that there were books I could write for fun, and there were books that I had to write for an audience. It leveled up my craft, again and again, on a faster and more dedicated timeline than I may otherwise have done so. None of that is a substitute for life experience, but I started to produce books that were more…book shaped. Who knows if I would have written and finished so many novels without the prompting of trying to get published. I didn’t get published because my work (and by extension, because I myself) wasn’t ready to be published, but I did get a chance to learn a bunch.

Most likely, if I hadn’t tried to get traditionally published until five or ten years later, the stuff I would have produced down the line would have been better than the stuff I produced at age 16. My starting line would definitely have been different, I’d have more life experience, but I also would have likely started out producing bad to mediocre stuff. I would still need to learn genre and publishing conventions. I would still need to learn so many things. But I’m grateful I started at 16, I’m grateful I got those tools to envision a future, and I’m grateful it pushed me to finish writing my first book, then my next.

People seem to think that you should wait for that next, better book to debut, but then you’d be waiting forever. And I despise the idea that you only get to debut once so the book you debut with has to be the ‘right’ one. Some people have terrible debut experiences and go on to write other stuff very happily. Some people have great debut experiences and struggle writing the next thing. The point being: I have always aimed to publish the next book. I’m not trying to put out masterpieces, I am trying to grow with my writing, as we all grow with our writing, and if the first book I get published is mediocre in comparison to the next one I write, that will be an expected result at age 16 or age 60. My next book will always hopefully be better. I’m going to debut a dozen times, even if I flop so hard I have to change my pen name in between. I’ll never be defined by just one book, so whatever I produce at whatever age, and however far I get in the publishing process with said book, it will never be wasted time. It will all always be worth it.

-Kvita