I knew something was wrong. Whenever something goes right, I am immediately suspicious, for starters. So back in 2016 when I was nominated for an Aurealis (and ended up winning), had an inclusion in Clarke’s “Best Science Fiction of the Year”, and got an agent, I was immediately on guard. Not just the sense that the universe was setting me up just to punch me in the dick. Not just that. I can’t explain it, but I knew it was an illusion. I knew lean times were coming.
And thus it came to pass.
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It has been two years and my novel did not sell, and will not sell. I’d averaged four or five sales per year my first few years, now I am down to one. A year. I haven’t stopped writing, haven’t stopped submitting, haven’t stopped trying. To the contrary.
My writing has improved – of this I have no doubt. Yet everything else has marched backwards. I can’t figure it. Either I am delusional about the quality of my output (always a possibility); or am reaching for more complex stories to tell, and failing; or I have succumbed to what poker players call variance.
I stopped playing regular poker a few years back. Writing, kids, gig work: I just don’t have the fucking time for cards. But when I did play, I won. I kept meticulous records, and the ten years I was a semi-professional player I was a winning player, in every one of those ten years (‘semi-professional’ means my income was supplemented by poker, but was not my primary source of income).
Poker is a game of skill, but because luck can impact on the short term, even the best poker professionals in the world have losing streaks. These losing periods are often the result of variance. Variance is when you statistically run below expectation. You get your hand in good, time and again, but your opponent gets lucky. Hits his flush on the river, or finds the gutshot straight, and your aces get cracked.
Variance can lead to a psychological unhinging (‘tilt’). A good poker player on tilt will start playing bad, as well. Then compound it all with alcohol, or drugs, or table games (that is, games like roulette where the casino holds an immutable edge, and skill can never make you a winner) or the various other temptations prevalent in the gambling world. It’s a downward spiral.
I did have variance, I did suffer losings streaks, and I did succumb to tilt from time to time. But I made sure I never got out of my financial depth, and had the discipline to drag myself out of the muck.
To writing. And Luck. It’s a question I’ve often asked, I’ve seen others ask: how much is luck a factor in writing? We know, sometimes, that quality of prose has nothing to do with sales (Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey) (though I’d argue both of those authors had a compelling story to tell, even if I personally don’t find either very interesting). We know the story of novels that never nearly were: Stephen King’s wife pulled his Carrie manuscript out of the trash can and made him submit it – the novel ended up getting him an advance of 400 grand. Dune was rejected by more than twenty publishers, and only ended up being bought by Chilton Books, which until that point was known for publishing car repair manuals. We know JK Rowling’s story: single mother, on welfare, looking at the brink of homelessness. After multiple rejections, was given a lifeline by Bloomsbury.
Part of me thinks these writers would always have been big. They all have singular gifts as storytellers: Stephen King as described his will to write as a kind of ‘sickness’ – something he could simply not stop doing, a daily obsession. The only solace Rowling found in her otherwise difficult life was in writing.
Yet, another part of me wonders: at what point would King have given up, and instead focussed on earning enough money for his family? At the time he sold Carrie, he couldn’t afford medication for his sick child. At what point would Rowling have given up on Harry Potter? What if King and Rowling had a statistically bad run?
These are legitimate questions to ask. And if we can still ask questions about the most successful authors, what does it mean for schlubs like me?
I’ve heard editors talk about it time and again. The right story at the right time. Right novel across the right desk. Timing is crucial.
I think this is literary variance. Now I do believe that in the long run, skill triumphs over luck; quality prose and storytelling triumph over the slush pile. But therein lies the problem. Overcoming variance takes both time and attempts. Going back to poker, if I had a bad run, I could still play a tournament every week, and play cash games a couple of times, so over a month I’d have multiple shots. Playing online, you can ‘multi-table’ and play hundreds of tournaments a week, if you wish (I never played that volume, but some pros certainly would).
Eventually the player does overcome the statistical bad run, and all is right with the poker gods.
The novel, on the other hand is not an hourly, or weekly event. It’s once every one, or three, or ten years. For me it’s two. Yes, there is a greater proportion of skill in writing a successful novel than playing a single poker tournament, but that’s not the point. The more you play cards, the less luck is a factor, the more likely your long-term results will reflect your ability. The point is this: how long does it take a writer to overcome variance? How many short stories? How many novels?
Let’s say your novel is extremely good. Eminently publishable. Well, there’s a lot of them. Millions of unpublished manuscripts go to the major houses, the minor houses, small publishers every single year. It’s a buyer’s market. Very good manuscripts will be passed over all the time.
Especially when you are starting out. This is key. The cards don’t care about your reputation. Who you are: colour, creed, class, religion – irrelevant. Poker is a true equaliser.
Editors do care. They need to sell copy. Someone in my position, with fifteen short story sales and no published novel. I’m still pretty close to the bottom of the pile. To get a book deal as a new writer, you must, in my opinion, be better than a lot of the published authors out there.
I don’t know what variance is in literature, in numerical terms. With the length of time required to write a novel, with the vagaries of the publishing houses and the tastes of their editors; with the unpredictability of the market – global events like Donald Trump, for example, making some books more appealing than others, it’s hard to guess. The politics of social media – very often related to ongoing cultures wars in the United States – this too, can play a part on the saleability of a novel.
I’d say variance can run for years in writing. A bad run could last a decade.
Iain M Banks wrote three science fiction novels that failed to find publishers before he decided to switch to mainstream fiction with The Wasp Factory. Brandon Sanderson sold the sixth novel he wrote. Charlie Stross the thirteenth. I’ve written four. The third gained me an agent, but no deal.
Part of poker is riding out variance with your sanity intact. Not every poker player can do it. I’ve known many who’ve ended up broke, alcoholic, on drugs, personal lives destroyed, even in prison. This is not uncommon. In fact pretty much every poker pro has been broke. It’s a different environment for the author – being alone at the keyboard has a different set of temptations than the milieu of the casino.
Can I ride out ten years of literary failure with my sanity intact? Perhaps. Ten years as an aid worker was far more difficult, far more stressful. The difference, though, was as an aid worker I could see the results of my hard work. As a poker player, I could detach myself from my losses, because, in the end, poker is only a game.
The problem for writers is they can labour for years for no appreciable result, and second, often wrap up their entire identity in that signifier: writer.
How many years can the writing gods keep punching me in the nuts? How many can I take?
This is what writers talk about when they talk about persistence. The same way poker players talk about the grind. Grinding tournaments, grinding the cash game; words on the page, the slush piles, racking up the rejections.
That’s the banality of success: the grind.
