May 16, 2006
Somewhere in these pages, Eric Mayer, who co-writes excellent historical mysteries with his wife Mary Reed, commented on my ability to shift back and forth between fiction and non-fiction. He's right, ultimately. I am good at shifting gears. But I wonder if I sometimes tend to lose focus because of it.

I'm not sure that's really the right way to put it. Look, here's where my career is at the moment. I'm making a living as a full-time freelance writer. About 99% of my writing income to-date comes from nonfiction--magazine and trade journal articles, a technical journal I edit. Now, the advances I'm expecting from Midnight Ink, though small, will probably account for 6%, maybe even 8% of this year's writing income. With the expected print run, the hoped-for sales, the split, etc., when the books come out I can optimistically hope those books will account for 1/3 or more of my writing income, at least if I expect my overall income to stay where it is. Yes, I actually would like it to increase, but I have a minimum number in mind.

Probably the hoped-for outcome is a writing career based entirely on fiction and not non-fiction. Putting aside all the nonsense about "creative fullfilment" and that sort of thing, writing fiction is a whole lot more fun than writing nonfiction. Actually, though, compared to analyzing chromosomes, which I did for 18 years, writing nonfiction is a hell of a lot of fun, too. And satisfying in a different sort of way.

I recently read an article about author Tim Green. He's a very successful novelist and he's also a broadcaster, among other things. They asked him why he didn't just write full-time, and he grinned and said he did that for six months and he wasn't busy enough. I sort of think that, too. I have to wonder, when I read interviews--or conduct interviews, for that matter, having recently interviewed author Michael Connelly--what some of these people do with their free time. I mean, many of them say it takes 7 to 9 months to write the novel, and much of that time involves writing from about 8 in the morning until lunchtime. They attend to writing business a bit and some of the time they're working 10 and 12 hours a day, but I know from my own experience that it's hard to write that long--actually write, not do all the ancillary things like research, e-mail, read, etc. So I do wonder what people in those situations do the rest of the time? Macrame? Surf internet porn? Paint by the numbers?

And there is a feeling I have that it took a lot of hard work and persistence and luck to get to where I am now, so if the fiction did take off, would you really want to give up the nonfiction? It's a tricky thing to contemplate in a serious fashion, actually, not just in a "daydreamin'" kind of way. Full-time freelance writing is not a secure way to make a living, no matter how you do it, but compared to fiction, nonfiction seems infinitely more secure. How ironic, to find that magazine writing provides some sort of financial safety net for my fiction writing.

Or, of course, I'm full of shit, I'll never make that much money off fiction, and my life, as it is, is pretty damned good, working out of the house, flexibile hours, decent income, a lot of variety and plenty of intellectual challenge and fullfillment. I've published two books. I will be publishing two more. Four books is a lot. I hope to have a career where I've published dozens before it's done. That's an accomplishment, isn't it?

Best,
Mark Terry