041: Ambition and Writing: Can They Coexist?
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ambition and writing: can they coexist?
Welcome to the podcast, thank you so much for being here. I'm trying something different. For this episode, I'm sitting on the couch. And my microphone is kind of propped up on a blanket. So we'll see how this how this goes how this sounds, it's the time of day where all of the animals in my house are sleeping, my dog and my two cats. So hopefully no one wants to come over and interrupt me. I don't know, I just was having one of those days where I wanted to not be in my office sitting at a computer. So here we go.
I have had the idea in the back of my mind for this episode for a while this is something that I I don't know if I've really addressed directly on the podcast. And that's the topic of ambition, when it comes to writing when it comes to you know, your your career really. And we've talked about other things on this on this podcast related to what it means to be a creative what it means to make money, but never in direct terms about ambition. And I think this is something that's really important. So yeah, I wanted to just kind of talk about my my thoughts on this. So before we talk about ambition and success, and what that means. I really think it's important for me to just say that success is different for everyone. Some writers might have an idea of success, that's just maybe they make a little bit of extra money on the side from their books, and they keep their day job and they're perfectly happy. You know, maybe they sell a few 100 copies of every book that they write. And that's amazing. And they get to connect with readers and post on social media occasionally. And they're very happy with that, like that is success to them. Other people might be happy, just even writing a book and putting it out into the world like that is success for them. Some people success might mean signing with a literary agent and getting a traditional publishing kind of big book deal from a big five publisher. Success looks different for everyone. And that's a good thing.
It means that you get to decide what your goals are. And it means you get to decide what you really want out of this whole writing thing. And of course, it's okay, if it changes, of course, you know, as you continue to write as you continue to grow as you continue to kind of let go of this journey of being an author. It's okay, if it changes I it does for a lot of people, I've noticed a lot of people who, you know, start out on a certain path thinking that they want one thing out of writing in their books, and then realizing along the way, that actually that's not as important as it once was. And I see this happening a lot actually with people who think they want to do traditional publishing, and then start embarking down there down that road just because they they think that that's what they're supposed to do. And all of a sudden, they realize, wait a second, why am I doing this? It's not like this is the only option. I just want to give you permission, not that you need permission for me, but I guess just remind you that you can change your mind.
But with that being said, this idea that success and goals and what we're hoping to kind of do in our writing journeys and writing careers, the fact that that can be different for everyone. It is true, but I also get this feeling from people still, that a lot of writers are stuck in this mentality of ambition being frowned upon. That you can't be a good writer who is focused on the craft, and and devoted to writing, while simultaneously also wanting to be very successful, and having big lofty goals for yourself that those things cannot exist together. And that's a problem. That's a big problem for me. I want to read you this this sentence from an article I read recently, I'm not even going to I'm not even gonna post the article because it really doesn't matter. I see some version of this floating around on the internet or social media pretty frequently. So this this person was writing about it Well writing the concept of ambition. And they said, ambitions of being a successful author are far different from a devotion to the practice of writing. And to a certain extent, okay, I can understand what this person is saying. They're saying that wanting to be successful and have having ambition is different than having a writing routine and really being devoted to writing.
Of course, I understand those words in that sentence and what they mean. The problem is that those words in the context of this bigger article are basically saying what I just said that these can't exist simultaneously. And I'm gonna go ahead and just say that I am someone who has a lot of ambition, both for my writing career and my my business, I have big, crazy goals and dreams. What I think, is important for me, something that I've really had to settle on, especially with the fact that my publishing journey has not been as smooth as I hoped is that I hold those goals and those dreams loosely. I set out to on my my publishing journey, in 2019, is because 2018 is when I signed with my agent, and I was convinced that I signed with her in May. And I was convinced that by July, I would have a book deal. And that would be it, boom, I'd be off to the races, which is funny thinking about, you know what I know now and how slowly traditional publishing moves. It's kind of funny that I thought I would just have a book deal in two months after signing with this agent, and boom, that would be done. Like everything would just be fall into place, and everything would be magical. And I'd be a best selling author and a matter of months. And, of course, it didn't happen that way. Which is okay, I look back now. And I can see some of the reasons why that didn't happen. Of course, it's so frustrating.
But you know, I'm at peace with it now. I think things are falling into place and things had to happen in a way that they did, that I couldn't have predicted back in 2019. And one of those reasons being that I'm just a better writer. And this second book that I've written is much better than my first. If you have a burning desire to write a book, but you don't know where to start, I've got something to share with you. Maybe you've always wanted to write a novel, but you struggled to find time to actually sit down and write maybe you wonder, Who am I to write a book, maybe you're not sure how to actually structure a full length novel Do you outline or just dive right in?
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But I've also really come to this understanding that I have to hold those goals very loosely and not be rigid, and hyper focused on them to the point where I'm getting impatient and frustrated that those things haven't happened yet. I am a very impatient person. I want what I want when I want it. And it's it's very hard for me to give up control and surrender to the fact that I can't control what happens, especially with a traditional publishing path. There are so many things like 99% of things are just out of my control my control, I can focus on writing the best book I possibly can. I made the decision to leave my agent. I'm in the process of querying right now to find a new agent. So those are things I can control, but the rest of it is completely out of my hands. And when I do get an agent, a different agent, and when I do get a book deal. Whenever that happens, however, that happens. I can't control what that book deal exactly looks like. Of course, I'll have some say hopefully, but I can't control how many copies the book sells, like going forward thinking about the next 5-10 20-30 years of my writing career. There's a lot that I can't control that I have to surrender to. And so it feels better to me energetically to hold those goals loosely. And just trust that however things are meant to happen, that they'll happen, but also be unapologetic about the fact that I do want a career as a writer.
I want a long career I want to write on A lot of books, I want to reach a lot of readers with my books. And that's something that I want. And I'm not going to apologize for that. I don't think that makes me less of a real writer. I don't think that makes me greedy. Like I'm fixated on the money aspect of it. No, I just think those two things are perfectly in harmony. I don't, I don't feel any conflict in myself about wanting those things. But then also, knowing that I'm doing it that I'm writing because I love writing. And I love the process of, you know, writing a book, and I love publishing, and they love books and getting, you know, the idea of connecting with readers, like I love all of that. And I don't feel any conflict about those things in internally. So I guess I would just encourage you to, if you have been feeling guilty for having ambition, as a writer, and having big goals, or even just having what you think are sort of moderate modest goals, don't apologize for those things. You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I also think that setting a goal and kind of determining what you want to happen after you finish writing the book, for a lot of people is an important part of the process to kind of connect with that future vision and like really start to feel into it. Okay, what is this going to feel like when I've written this book? What is this going to feel like when it's out in the world, and just kind of getting used to those, those concepts, not getting too wrapped up in it to the point where you're spending all of your time fixated on the future, and not spending any time in the present moment actually writing the book. You know, that's, that's not a good thing, either. But just staying in touch with that future vision of what you want, I think can be can be helpful. Now the holding it loosely part is that has definitely, like I said, been a process for me, because I am so impatient. But it's really been a learning experience for me of surrender and trust.
And I had someone the other day asked me like, Well, why don't you just self publish? And I would like to Self Publish. Absolutely. I think that's something I want to explore in the future. But I want to do both. I want to do both. And because I had an agent already. And because I've kind of dipped my toe into the traditional publishing world, I want to keep going down that path. But yeah, I don't have anything against, you know, self publishing, or even like hybrid publishing, where I work with a smaller press to put out my book, like I'm absolutely open to all of that. It's just, I kind of want to see this traditional thing through if I can. But yeah, I'm definitely open to the, to a future of publishing in a lot of different ways. I think that's something that's kind of exciting. Yeah, so basically, to sum up this episode, don't apologize or feel guilty for being ambitious, you can be a writer who is a serious writer, a real writer who has fun with it, who's really talented and also want to sell a lot of copies and reach a lot of readers. Don't ever apologize for that.
Okay, let me know. I'm curious what your gut reaction is to this episode, if this is something that you've also wrestled with, because I don't I get a sense sometimes that there's kind of how it's taboo to talk about money, that it's maybe a little bit taboo to talk about taboo to just unapologetically declare something, not that you have to declare it. You don't have to go on social media and be like, I'm going to sell X amount of copies, I'm declaring it, you know, you don't have to do that unless you want to. I haven't even gotten specific with it. I'm not saying like, Oh, I want my book advance to be this amount of money. I did that in the past. And of course, it didn't work out. So I'm kind of just surrendering to the process again, and not getting really specific with like, exactly what I want to happen. But I do have a vague idea. And I do have big like I said they're pretty big, like ambitious goals.
But yeah, yeah, I'm curious what your gut reaction to this is, if you've also kind of felt this, like sense this taboo from people or if you're someone who's really embrace embraced your own ambition. I would love to hear your experience with it. So send me a message. Yeah, I'd love to know where you're at with this. Send me a message on Instagram at Katie Wolf. Thanks for listening, y'all.