So you want to be a writer? Good luck

My first book came out in 2006. My son was a year old. I decided to quit my day job in civil society a year later because my first book had been well received by critics. Grisham was doing it. Piccoult was doing it.

Closer to home, Adichie was doing it, how difficult could it be? It turns out, very.

I had to shelve the idea of being a full-time writer as I had initially hoped to do. My full-time writing had to be executed differently.

I talked to an editor friend and they paid me for writing book reviews. Another radio producer mate got me a gig on the writing team of South Africa’s first radio soapie in English. Too often, I found myself fighting with people in accounts because I had not been paid on time.

The consultants at my bank all got to know me as I came through to renegotiate my mortgage payments every so often. It left a sour taste in my mouth. This, unfortunately, is the life many writers are familiar with.

LEARNT ALOT

I learnt a lot of other things. I learnt that publishing is a business. A writer owes it to themselves to read their contract carefully before signing anything.

If I had consulted other writers, I would never have been okay with the royalty fee I settled for.

I learnt, too, that just because people think your face is familiar, may be even express admiration for you having written a book, does not mean that they have read it, and where they have read it, it doesn’t mean they have bought it. 

Some examples.

There was the flight attendant who came up to me at an airport as I landed from a literary festival.

“Akere you’re Zukiswa Wanner?”

Picture me with a smile. Someone knows me. Someone has read me.

“Yes I am.”

“Konje what do you do?”

Huh?

“I saw your picture in a magazine, I haven’t yet read the interview. What do you do, sisi?”

Ouch. Unfortunately this publicity coup with my being online, in magazines, on television resulted in my having that one rela who would call incessantly asking for money.

“I don’t have such an amount,” I responded.

“But you’re stingy. We see you on television, you are in the newspapers and now you want to say you don’t have money. Fine. Hope you get full of your money that you can’t even share with your family.” This from the family member who did not even know the title of my book and who had asked me  for free copies ‘to help you market.’

And then when I found someone who had actually read my work it was in a restaurant. This woman came over to me and said, “I am so glad to finally meet you sisi. I loved your book. It really spoke to me.”

And I beamed, “thank you so much for buying.”

Alas no attempts at making me feel good from this woman. “Ag shem, I didn’t buy it, y’know? My sister had it on her bookshelf, I picked it up and I couldn’t put it down so I took it to my house. When I finished it I passed it on to my cousin. Now everyone in my family has read it and we all love it. We are your number one fans.”

No lady. If you were my number one fans, you’d make sure that I am able to pay my bills by sparing a little change to buy my books instead of circulating one among 20 people. I should have said that. I did not.

If you do not self-publish, you will also feel the pain of receiving your first royalty cheque.

One of the more memorable royalty cheque stories happened with a writer who has since become a good friend of mine.

We had never met but I had read her. I had been trying to find her for an article I was writing. I sent her an e-mail with all contacts, she did not respond. Then three months after I initially got in touch, I got a phone call.

“Zukiswa hi, you don’t know me. My name is ________.”

“Oh hi, I loved your book.”

“Thanks. Sorry I was unable to get back to you but I wanted to ask. I just got my first royalty cheque and I don’t mean to pry but is it supposed to be this little?” I laughed.

I laughed because I had got my royalty cheque a few months before and this is what I had learnt from it.

All the drafts of the manuscript that became a book, all those interviews to publicise the book when it came out, all the writing for free for publicity and I was considered lucky to have sold a little over 1,200 copies in South Africa after the first six months by my publisher. This shook me so much that until today I refuse to loan out books that are available in bookshops to anyone.

I recently got a message from a young writer friend who had just completed his fourth draft of his first novel.

It read, “Finished fourth draft. It’s painful. Now I know why you demand that people buy books and not borrow.”  In four drafts, this young man had just learnt that writing is work.

So you want to be a writer? Do it. Success may come much sooner for you than it did for me. Best of luck.