{45} Everything’s a risk
My Poppa used to say, “you got to fish or cut bait.” Either way, you are going to smell like fish and probably end up bleeding. There is no safe choice, just the decision between cutting yourself with a knife or getting stabbed with a hook.
That’s life, my friends. You are going to get hurt. Either way, there will be blood.
I thought of this as I talked with friend and fellow author Patricia Eimer about writing and publishing our work. In the writing world there is a huge divide, less deep and wide than it used to be but still there, between traditional publishing and indie/self publishing. Some authors defend one or the other voraciously, while most of us muddle around in between, willing to take any luck that comes our way.
But one cliche I’m really sick and tired of hearing is that it is “safer” to go with traditional publishing routes to success. While I can name a few authors I know personally who did just that fabulously well, I can name many, many other friends who got roasted by a traditional publisher, left to smolder in the ruins of their dreams. I cannot say that for them it was a “safe” choice.
In fact, I’m tired of hearing about how difficult it is to follow your dreams, how unlikely you are to achieve success, how dangerous it is to fall out of lock-step with “safe and reliable” life choices.
Because, get this: nothing is safe and reliable. Nothing.
Every choice is a risk. Going into retail, law, education, manufacturing, or management is a risk, because there are too few good jobs and too many overqualified people willing to be underpaid for bad jobs.
That’s just to start.
You might end up a single parent. You might have to be the sole caretaker for family members who are disabled, or sick, or elderly. You might get sick yourself, or be seriously injured in a car accident. You might work all your life at a job you hate just to survive. You might love your job but get promoted to a position that is stressful and gives you ulcers.
Or, like someone I talked to recently, you might work a good steady job with the state for over a decade doing highly skilled work that no one else can do only to be one of dozens of people laid off when your department is eliminated with no warning.
All those examples of “safe” jobs and “smart” life choices and “good” opportunities are bunk. They might have been true in the 1950s if you were a white anglo-saxon Christian man, but they sure as hell aren’t true today. Even people who have done everything by the book end up declaring bankruptcy because of medical debt, or paying out most of their savings to fix their kid’s teeth, right before the company they work for goes out of business.
Yes, the chances that I or any artist will make a lot of money is vanishingly small. Odds are stacked against us, every one. But there is no safe choice that will spare us from difficulties, not one.
So save me the concerned lectures about how unlikely it is that I will ever make money off of writing books. In fact, just dump those lectures overboard. No one needs them. No one. You are not telling anyone anything they don’t already know. You are not helping.
What people need is support. They need to know that when they bleed, someone will be there to help. The best thing you can offer is not caution but encouragement.
The best thing you can do for yourself is stop pretending that there is a safe choice to make. Every success comes with a price but not every price buys success, so it’s more a matter of what you are willing to risk to make the scars worth the effort.
Fish or cut bait, my friends. Fish or cut bait.
