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Terrifying Percentages Are My Engine of Hope: How to Stay Hopeful When the Odds Are Long
1. Only 7% of all writers who attempt to write a novel ever complete it.
2. Only 3% of novelists ever traditionally publish their novels.
3. Only 2% of novelists make a living at it.
4. And only about 0.001% of all novelists earn 6–7 figures.
But when I read them (2014 roughly) I already had 18 years as a writer under my belt. I’d written three novels by then, two which had gone nowhere, and one that had just been signed to a small publishing house. I had published about twenty five short stories in various literary journals, some paying, most not, and earned a grand total of $216 for all my effort.
Reading them the first time crushed me. Seeing those numbers pounded my enthusiasm and inspiration into a minuscule campfire of a spark that wouldn’t have kept a boy scout troop of amoebas warm for very long. I stayed away from my laptop, notebooks, and the scraps of paper I occasionally scribbled haiku and lines of poetry onto for a few days. Phrases like, “You’re wasting your time,” and “Clearly, you’re not good enough.”
Eventually I returned to my laptop and started writing again, but the percentages wouldn’t leave me. I was working on my fourth novel and “Only 2%” would…
