Thank you for your life's work. Here's an apple.

On the vagaries of modern creative life

Last year, I decided to commit fully to the creative life. It’s been rewarding in many, many ways, and I’ve never been more certain that this is the life I want to live. That said, getting here has been difficult and expensive, so I figured I’d share some lessons learned in case they’re helpful.

99% of the time, creative work is not financially viable.

Launching a creative endeavor is not really like running a business, although you can bring some of the same skills to it. I just spent the last few weeks attending music concerts and dance performances in India. It takes years, if not a lifetime, to develop the kind of skill to perform at this level, but the artists are barely compensated, if at all. They might get a token amount, a silk shawl, or a basket of fruit. It makes me realize that the absurdity is in debut authors getting ridiculous advances when they are just at the beginning of their journey (she says, as a debut author who got one).

These days, there’s no money in publishing. Advances are rare, and most publishing houses wait for proven sales records before investing in an author, or drop the author if their first book isn’t profitable. You have to decide if this is what you want to do with your life even if you never make a cent.

There are three kinds of editors; they’re all indispensable.

A developmental editor helps your story form. They advise on plot, characterization, pacing, and continuity. On standalone novels, I’ve had great support from Mark Spencer, and with my fantasy series, I’ve leveraged Faber Academy’s readers.

A line editor ensures your prose serves your story’s intentions and themes. This isn’t about grammar, but about style, sound and clarity. E.g. with Her Golden Coast, my intention was to pay homage to the Beat writers’ stream-of-consciousness style, while having the story read “in a single breath.” Caroline Manring is my line editor, and she’s amazing.

A proofreader checks for capitalization, commas, hyphens, typos, and all the stuff you grow blind to when you’ve been working on a novel for months or years. No manuscript is ever fully free of typos, but a proofreader can get you close.

No investment in craft is wasted, although it may not be obvious at the time.

A few years ago, I wrote a book that went nowhere. But if I hadn’t, I would never have been able to write the novels I’m writing now. I’m finally able to put into practice the things I learned from the process of writing that book. My brief pandemic foray into writing webcomics taught me about how to write deeply visualized scenes, how to ensure characters are never just “two heads talking,” and how to plan ahead to work with artists and cover designers. Similarly, I’ve taken several courses and read books on writing craft that weren’t immediately relevant, but the internalized lessons are paying off now.

You don’t fit creativity into your life; you plan your life around your creativity.

I used to think I needed to carve time out of my schedule to write, and would agonize about how to get a few hours each week when I wasn’t bogged down with work. My life was slowly becoming a game of advanced Tetris: how to squeeze in 15 minutes of music practice between breakfast and the gym, how to write for an hour every day because I was told I must by some book, how to write and still attend enough social events to keep my friends.

Then came a revelation: Priority Darwinism. The most important things must and will get done; everything else can go to hell. There’s a stack rank: (1) Health (2) Writing (3) People (4) Work and (5) Travel. I’ve finally stopped feeling the need to apologize for the stack rank or hide it from a society that expects you to put People (if you’re a woman) or Work above all else. Once I got past the need to prioritize everything equally (or at least to claim to others that I cared about the same things they did to the same level), I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. The mental focus that came with that can’t be understated. Now, I don’t need to worry about whether I will have time to write. I just do.

Abandon binary thinking and false choices, and all sorts of opportunities open up.

So many questions of the creative life feel apocalyptic: will I get an agent or not? Should I submit now, or edit my manuscript a bit more? Should I self-publish or go with traditional publishing? Is my novel Young Adult or Adult, literary or commercial? Especially on social media, it can seem as if one wrong choice condemns you to obscurity.

My first novel, Driving by Starlight, was traditionally published by Macmillan. Her Golden Coast was self-published. In terms of sales, my self-published book, which only came out in August, has already sold more copies than Driving by Starlight did all year. I’m planning on self-publishing a novel in 2025, and traditionally publishing another in 2026 or later. My novels are neither literary nor commercial, neither YA nor adult. Fitting into the system can help give you a boost, if that’s something that works for you, but I never expected to fit. Neither my identity nor my stories are easily classified; that’s okay. I’d rather write for a few who love my work than surprise and disorient readers expecting something else.

Writing is not a solitary act, unless you choose to make it one.

Learning music over the last year has helped me realize that I get a certain joy in playing for myself, and an entirely different one when I play for an audience. In the same way, I write certain things only for myself, but at other times, part of the pleasure of writing is feedback from others. It took me a while to realize that the reason I wasn’t asking others for help was fear—the usual fear of rejection, of not being understood.

Changing my mindset about writing from a “writing for / speaking to” frame to a “share the stage with / connecting with” frame changed everything. Some of you have shared plot ideas and character thoughts on my upcoming novel, while others have reviewed or blurbed Her Golden Coast. I do have a creative vision, but it’s not just mine, and that’s what makes it better.

Learn to appreciate the near-misses and celebrate even small successes.

Several times in 2024 alone, I had a near-miss. In one case, a publisher passed on Her Golden Coast but asked for my next novel. In another case, a publisher loved it, but could not get her team to support its profitability. And recently, on my fantasy novel, I received the following as part of a rejection (on a full manuscript) from an agent: “If this was a few years back, I would have taken this on in a heartbeat, because I do believe in you! I'm honestly cheering you on so hard from the sidelines, and I have every confidence you're going to find success! Can't wait to see it! And absolutely feel free to try any of the other agents at [agency] with my whole-hearted recommendation!”

In each case, the feedback I got helped me see that rejection sometimes has little to do with artistic merit, and more to do with financial viability. Agents only make money when a book is published, which means they would need to put in a ton of work to gamble on you. The more you can do to get the work there yourself, the easier it is for them to say Yes.

Marketing may feel icky, but the alternative is worse.

Like almost every author out there, I hated the idea of marketing. Nothing freaked me out more than talking about myself or my book. I used to feel as if I was pushing contraband on minors. Then I started meeting my readers. In the pre-pandemic pre-recession era, back when even mid-list authors got book tours, I suppose this was the norm. You talked about your book, you met people who asked you questions about it, you knew what did and didn’t resonate with whom and why.

These days, almost all book clubs are virtual, and it’s rare for authors to get book events unless they plan and finance them themselves. Even bestselling authors have paid to have their events in bookstores, with the publisher only chipping in if an audience is guaranteed. At a conference, I heard from an author who talked about “That time I did a reading to no one,” i.e. the demoralizing experience of doing an author event that is poorly attended because nobody marketed it.

I tell myself not to think of it as marketing, but as sharing a story I believe in. It’s easier to do that when you have positive feedback from readers, when they tell you (and others) what resonates with them. For instance, one reader wrote, of Her Golden Coast:

This book touched my soul. Her Golden Coast takes you along with Laurie Lamont as she comes into herself and falls deeper and deeper in love with her magnetic roommate Mal. This story is roommates to lovers at its finest, told in a lyrical literary fiction style scattered generously with introspection and wisdom. I found myself highlighting all of Laurie’s insights and observations like crazy. Deracine’s prose is a delight.

But what truly struck me was the portrayal of Mal. It’s rare enough to see South Asian women star in romances, let alone South Asian women who love women. Mal is a charismatic and commanding force of nature, the perfect compliment to Laurie’s quiet and gentle kindness. She is beautiful, strong, and muscular and provides for Laurie as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, but her emotional unavailability makes her come off as uncaring. It was a pleasure to share their slow burn and witness Mal’s growth arc. As an Indian lesbian, Mal made me feel seen.

San Francisco and the tech scene are the beating heart of the story, I learned so much about the city in this book, and I could really feel Deracine’s connection to it. I can’t imagine Laurie and Mal falling in love anywhere else.

Well, this review touched my soul. Yes, yes, this is why I wrote it! For you! And everyone like you! All the agony of “marketing” the book is so it reaches those it’s meant for, and I just need to suck it up and do it. Ultimately, you have to have the conviction to bet on yourself first. If you don’t, no readers will either.

Algorithms make the world go round. If you make peace with them, they might help you.

There’s a lot of great reasons to hate corporations (or governments, or institutions generally; I’m an anarchist, can you tell?) And there’s no question that Amazon has squeezed out most of the other game in town when it comes to books. But as someone who has now tried the self-publishing route, I can see why Amazon’s success is truly deserved.With my traditionally published book, I get vague numbers about sales from BookScan, and a royalty statement (maybe) once every six months. Since my editor at Macmillan left, I get nothing at all.

I published Her Golden Coast with both Amazon and Ingram Spark. Amazon’s UI was intuitive and easy to use, and I had a proof copy in 3 days. Ingram couldn’t even tell me when they were likely to ship, and their UI makes it almost impossible to review a proof copy without accidentally publishing your book to the world. Amazon also gives me real-time sales data, including how many pages people have read on Kindle.

The novel is a conversation, not a manifesto.

Someone told me the first part of that sentence, and it changed my entire outlook. I realized that the authors I loved growing up were contemporaries who talked to each other all the time. They shared ideas and theories, they reviewed each others’ work, they participated in discussions and panels and salons together, amplified and critiqued each other, or wrote novels that built on what others were doing.

Modern publishing is not like that. Each book is like a drop of rain in a thunderstorm, to the point where people simply run and take cover, because they can’t engage with the sheer volume. Moreover, each author seems to be an independent voice trying to get heard above the din. When a novel feels timely, it is often an accident; publishing takes 1-2 years to get a book out. By the time you write the next <insert the novel that inspired you here> that trend is already over, that market is saturated, and the conversation has moved on.

I can’t change the industry, but I can do small things to live my writing life the way I want. I can and do have my writing groups that I support, I can blurb others’ work, leave reviews on Amazon / Goodreads, etc. And when it’s important to get a book out faster to meet a moment, I can take control of my own destiny and just put it out there.

Here’s to 2025! You’re going to get at least one novel from me this year. Some of you have already read it, but if you’d like to be an advance advance reviewer (e.g. to blurb it before I put it up on NetGalley) let me know!

Wishing you all the best in your creative lives.