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Over at Snowdrop Dreams of Books, where I also talk about writing the final book of a trilogy and admit to who my favorite character is.

“Liza is still as strong of a character as ever, fighting for what is right, pushing the limits and always looking out for those around her … The entire world building in this last book is amazing … You are always wondering if things will be okay, if Liza and her crew will figure out how to make things right and if they do – will anything be like was once before?”

If you head over in the next few hours, you can enter to win your own copy of Faerie After, too!

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Cynthia Leitich Smith was one of the first writers I mentioned the idea of a Writing for the Long Haul series to, and when I did, she commented that those who keep writing are “writing survivors.”

I’m thrilled to kick the series off with a post from Cynthia on what writing survival means to her.

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I owe much of my publishing success to my lack of financial security.

When I hear others talk of the pain of rejection or the unfairness of market whims or the challenge of staying motivated, I think of my mortgage, the payment due on my health insurance, and the cost of my guilty pleasure—Whole Foods hummus.

Of course that’s not the whole equation. While many of my children’s-YA books have sold well (and a few not-so-well), I don’t initially conceive or craft them from a commercial perspective.

Instead, I’m a creature of two brains.

One: the literary artist with a commitment to diverse (defined broadly) protagonists and an experimental bent with regard to age markets, techniques and forms. I’ve published funny picture books, quiet multicultural books, quasi-memoir essays, and YA adventure-fantasies with a feminist and intercultural bent. I’ve won awards and made bestseller lists and seen books go out of print.

Two: the fierce, savvy business person who takes all that—coupled with speaking and teaching fees—and cobbles together a base salary. In the latter years I’ve earned more, in the early years less, but having a baseline goal keeps me pounding the keyboard, hitting the road, and stretching in new directions.

I have a respectful patience for the inner artist but always hold her accountable.

You’re in love with that niche project? Fine. How are you going to market it? Not the publisher—you. Whatever the house does, that’s icing. You encourage it. You work it. But it’s your name on the byline.

Your sales figures can and will be held against you. Glancing around the conference floor, you notice how many of your once-popular colleagues are no longer in the game. Doesn’t anyone else miss them?

How do you carry on? What are you going to do?

What you’ve always done. Choose yourself, your book, whatever you’re trying to say in the whole. Do it in such a way that lifts up everyone, that doesn’t apologize for mattering, that shows a sense of purpose. Recognize but don’t dwell on the uncontrollable. Where there is potential for forward momentum, give it grease with as much good humor and dignity as you can spare.

You’ve stumbled before. You’ve fallen before and started over from scratch. You’ve made a fool out of yourself. You’ve also helped build readers and community and changed lives for the better.

There’s wisdom to be gained from all that and stories that can help lift up someone else. All of your fellow survivors have successfully reinvented themselves at least once and so can you.

Do for yourself what you do for your stories.

When all else fails, begin again.

If only because hummus is expensive.

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Cynthia Leitich Smith is the New York Times and Publishers Weekly best-selling author of the Tantalize series and Feral series. Her award-winning books for younger children include Jingle Dancer, Indian Shoes, and Rain is Not My Indian Name. She first published Jingle Dancer in 2000.

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More about the Writing for the Long Haul series.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

I’ve been thinking for a while now about what it means to write for the long haul.

I’ve been writing professionally for more than two decades now, rebooting and restarting and rethinking my career–as well as the reasons I’m writing in the first place–many times. I’ve watched other writers do the same, and I’ve wondered at all the varied shapes our careers have taken.

I’ve also watched writers stop writing, and I’ve wondered at that too, because there doesn’t seem to be any one formula for when writers continue writing and when they move on to other things. It’s not as simple as the most successful writers lasting the longest, or the rest of us stopping after we hit some set number of challenges or bumps in the road. Whatever it takes to keep writing, it’s something more complicated than that.

What does it take to keep writing for the long haul? Much of the discussion of writing online is about how break in, or else about how to manage a career for the first few books or the first few years. Those perspectives are valuable, but I’m also interested in seeing an ongoing discussion of how writers survive beyond that–not just from a business point of view, but also from an emotional and life balance point of view.

So I started asking novelists who’ve been in this field for at least a decade (often far longer) why they’re still here and how they keep writing.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll post their responses as part of a new weekly blog series. I’m already enjoying the range of takes that I’m reading, and I’m looking forward to sharing them.

I’m hopeful that, wherever we are in our individual careers, we all can learn from each other.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Back from a lovely, energizing, soul-filling week at Kindling Words West, in the company of a writing community I’ve not seen for far too long, not setting goals for once but simply (yet not-so-simply) filling the well.

And I wrote today, not because I’m supposed to or because I’ve established useful routines and habits and know how to stick with them, but simply because it’s what I woke up wanting to do more than anything else in the world.

It’s good to be back.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.