Celebrate! (Your weakness???)

by M. L. Buchman

There's an old adage: You must focus on your weaknesses in order to improve them.

It took me years before I learned that this is generally one of the stupidest ideas ever put forth.

Okay, let's look at an example. You're a pianist. You have a weak run when driving downscale to your left pinkie. You need to work on that. That's not working on your weakness. Your strength is being a pianist and you should fix that run. Your weakness is that you've always had asthma and allergies and working on your tuba playing just because that is a weakness would be a total waste of time.

Yet we are time and time again told to work on our weaknesses.

Do I have weaknesses in my writing? Absolutely! Do I work on them hard? Absolutely! (Though I'll answer that differently in a moment, but for now...Absolutely!) But my overall strength is writing. I didn't come to fiction until my mid-thirties, and I sucked at it early on. However, I've always been a strong writer of science papers, essays, program proposals, operations manuals, and a wide variety of other things. I love playing in the land of the written word. I needed to work on my "fiction" weakness within my "writing" strength.

LEANING INTO THE WEAKNESS

By identifying writing as my strength, I can finally let go of the years and years I spent attempting to create music.

• 6 years of piano lessons (and several years working on my own on a Fender Rhodes that I never played well)
• 6 years in the high school percussion section
• 20+ years playing guitar (including a lovely 12-string Martin that I still miss on occasion)
• 4 years of operatic vocal production
• flute
• fiddle
• banjo
• penny whistle
• 4 different harmonicas (good ones, including the neck holder so I could play them (very poorly) along with my guitar)
• I became a sound designer and performance tech for live theater for several years and apprenticed myself to two of the leading sound engineers in the Pacific Northwest.
• ...you get the idea

When I was a kid, my parents started my piano lessons by setting a double gin and tonic in front of the teacher. I was finally thrown out of high school band when they realized that I couldn't keep time. My songwriting group was always puzzled by my cool lyrics (writing words, duh!) and my off-key singing. The opera voice coach...

Let's just say that I had lots and lots of passion but had neither innate talent nor any particularly trainable skill. Actually, it turns out that, like my mother, I'm fairly tone deaf. 

As a kid, I also desperately wanted to be a pilot. I got my private-pilot license and was well on my way to my commercial ticket when it was discovered that I was partially color blind. Not enough to be unsafe to fly, but enough that I'd probably never get a chance to fly the big jets that so fascinated me. I could have stuck with it and somehow made it work. Maybe.

I've met tone deaf musicians, who've learned by rote how each note should feel when they sing. I've met a theater lighting designer and painter who was completely colorblind. They both firmly believed that no weakness should defeat them. The results were occasionally...curious.

LEANING INTO THE STRENGTH

Back to my writing. Do I have weaknesses? Sure. Setting is a major challenge for me that I still fight against. My writing will never have the lush wonder of James Lee Burke where you want to shower off the New Orleans swamp after he takes you there for murder. So I work on my setting, but even though it is a weakness inside my overall strength, it isn't where most of my attention goes.

I've learned over the last 25 years and 6 million words what some of my core strengths are. Two of them are: relatable characters and pacing. It is by focusing on my core strengths that I created my most popular characters:

• Emily Beale of the Night Stalkers secret helicopter regiment as she rode rough-shod through over 35 military romantic suspense titles.
• And now, Miranda Chase, the high-functioning autistic, air-crash savant who is fighting to be normal...and to stop the next war from erupting.

Relatable characters and pacing. I've proven to myself that I am an action-adventure writer, whether in romance, science fiction, or technothrillers. (At least so far. Who knows what the future will bring.)

But I didn't achieve my success to date by leaning into my weaknesses. If I had, you'd have okay setting, some more sensory details, and even more dialogue (though my years working in live theater helped make that last one probably tip over from a weakness to a moderate strength--still, something I do try to improve over time). But you'd probably not have a very exciting read.

Instead, I study my strengths of pacing and character like a rabid dog. Well, okay, like a fascinated writer, but still. Those are my strengths and I'm always studying how to play better to them.

MANAGING YOUR INNER WRITER

Ages ago (about 7 years), I co-wrote a book with my sister (a visual artist--photography):

Managing Your Inner Artist/Writer

One of the things we talked about was how to focus on success and strength rather than weakness.

One one of the most important points for me in the whole book is this simple little diagram of the most basic elements of a project plan.

Most people have a real weakness in one of these areas. And this is one case where I think it is CRUCIAL to fix that weakness. Because if you don't...well...

• People who never start a project, well, they never got anything done.
• Some folks are great at starting them, but need someone else to actually do them or them never really move along.
• Others are dynamos at Starting and Doing, but can never quite let go and finish. (If you're on the 9th major revision of your book, or even the 3rd, I'm looking at you!)
• And my own greatest failing? I SUCKED (note the semi-victorious past tense) at acknowledging and celebrating my achievements (I'm still working on it--hard). Yet, this is where you get self-confidence and the energy to start the next project. (Folks weak in this area are the ones who burn out because they go straight from finishing one project into the fast churn of starting the next. Trust me, I know. If you doubt that, just read this book.)

Mid-life Crisis On Wheels

WE MUST CELEBRATE OUR SUCCESSES!

How do we do this? That's up to each individual person.
For me? Here are two hot examples:

One: Just a few steps from my writing desk is my brag shelf. I can't tell you how many times I stop and stand there to just stare in wonder at what I've created over the last 25 years of work. This shelf started out as 20 author copies of my first book in 1997. But now? Well, I've done a lot of writing since then.

Two: Just yesterday I published a new collection of short stories.
These five stories were written between 2016 and 2018. But I didn't just pack these stories together. I took the time to go back and read each one. To remember, with joy, the creation of each tale and all those cool characters. I wrote brand-new introductions to each story about why they were important to me then, and why some of them are surprisingly important to me now.

The Complete Night Stalkers 5E Stories

Yes, I hope that fans will want this box set. However, even if they don't, I got to spend some time celebrating those tales of romance and adventure, and remembering that I am fortunate enough to spend my days reveling in the area of my overall strength. (Which beats the crap out of still being a frustrated musician.)

And for me, "Celebration" is definitely a key weakness that I've turned into a strength.

USA Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. Buchman has 60+ novels, 100 short stories, and lotsa audiobooks. Booklist says: 3x “Top 10 Romance of the Year.” PW says “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.” A project manager with a geophysics degree, he’s flown and jumped out of planes and also bicycled solo around the world. More at: www.mlbuchman.com

Travel Adventures in Writing

by M. L. Buchman

Well, last month I messed up and used this month's theme of "Adventures in Travel" for last month's blog post about writing the book of my bicycle journey around the world:
https://romancingthegenres.blogspot.com/2019/07/every-book-has-its-time.html

I figured that this month I should look at my "travels" in writing.

Recently I was part of a small group discussion about the drop-out rate of authors from the industry, many of them with reasonably established careers. We talked a bit about why it happens. I eventually proposed a "model" but I've given it a lot of thought since and wanted to explore this a bit more.

I'm not talking about the "fad" writers. "Oh, everything with Girl in the title is hot, I'll write one of those." "Oh $0.99 books with massive ad campaigns are the answer to everything." Most of these folks are gone as quickly as they arrived. I'm talking about people who want to have a good, consistent writing career.

There are a number of hurdles to clear, things that can really stop authors in such a way they may never recover:

• Actually finishing and letting go of (publishing) that first book.
• The terror of the blank page of the second book especially after all that pretty polishing of the first.
• Five books later, discovering that this career requires hard, consistent work, and that success rarely just dangles from the trees. Yes, there are the breakout writers, but I'm not talking about those, I'm talking about steady, workaday writers like myself.

But once they clear the five-book hurdle, most authors seem able to continue up to that 20-book threshold. Then a massive winnowing happens at this point and this is what aroused my (and the group's) curiosity.

Why at 20 books?

By then, especially if the author focused intelligently on a genre or series, income is often moving nicely. Maybe not stellar yet, but probably a decent income. They know how much work it is.

And then they just walk away. 

My theory on this is actually tied up in my own recent experience. I have fifty-two romance novels across multiple series. But 12 of those are in contemporary romance, which is quite different from writing military romantic suspense. And the military rom was split up across multiple series and the last 9 years (so I wrote many other things in between, perhaps bypassing that 20-book trip point that way).

But why at 20 books?

My theory is that most of the truly long career writers I've spoken to have had to reinvent themselves. Either the industry or the traditional publishers' perception of the industry created tectonic-scale shifts and suddenly Gothic romance, westerns, horror, Cold War thrillers, science fiction in general, and so on simply were no longer a viable option. A writer who wrote 20 novels without being "forced" to reinvent themselves would consider that they'd had a good run.

Then along came indie publishing. Now we are able to reach an on-going audience despite any trends or perceived trends. We are free to write 40 military romantic suspense novels as part of a career with no clear pressure to reinvent ourselves.

I think that this is the real 20-book trap. Twenty novels is typically between 1 and 2 million words. Isn't it time for a break? For a change up? For a refreshing of motivation? You don't have to do as I have and jump whole genres, but shifting from mystery to thriller, from noir to cozy, from space opera to apocalyptica, even small-town romance to urban romance. These kind of changes keep us fresh as writers. At least that's my theory.

Yes, many careers were ended by the "tectonic" shifts of the past, but how many more were created anew by an author reinventing and refreshing themselves? I'd wager the later number is far bigger.

I recently noticed that my own instinctive writer was looking for a change. My last several military romantic suspense novels have been reviewed with "thrilling, fast-paced, adventure" far more than heart-felt romance as they used to be.

So? I've decided to listen to that for a while. I'm not abandoning romance. But for now, I'm working very hard to reinvent myself as a thriller writer. We'll see how that goes...

Coming November 19th and December 17th the Miranda Chase NTSB thrillers:

More Info / Pre-order

A supersonic drone flies Black Ops missions from the most secure hangar in the nation.

A C-130 Hercules transport plane lies shattered in the heart of America’s Top Secret military airbase — Groom Lake in the Nevada Test and Training Range.

China’s newest stealth J-31 jet fighter goes missing.

The CIA, the military, and the National Reconnaissance Office are all locked in a power struggle.

One woman is trapped in the middle. Miranda Chase, lead crash investigator for the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), becomes a pawn in a very dangerous game.

Burdened with a new team, she must connect the pieces to stay alive. And she must do it before the wreckage of her past crashes down upon her.

Think I'm right or wrong? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the challenges facing career-writers.

---

M.L. “Matt” Buchman started the first of over 60 novels, 100 short stories, and a fast-growing pile of audiobooks while flying from South Korea to ride his bicycle across the Australian Outback. Part of a solo around the world trip that ultimately launched his writing career in: thrillers, SF/F, and romance.

His titles have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the year” and 3-time Booklist “Top 10 of the Year” as well as being a “Top 20 Modern Masterpiece” in romantic suspense. As a 30-year project manager with a geophysics degree who has: designed and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, and solo-sailed a 50’ ketch, he is awed by what's possible. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.