I receive a lot of career-help advice that goes something like this:
“Why waste time writing fiction! Just write history!”
Other times, it goes something like this:
“Why waste time writing history! Just write fiction!”
I’m grateful that anyone cares enough to give advice. Truly. And I’ve heard this sort of thing enough that I’ve dutifully unpacked it. I know some other folks who also wrestle with multiple career tracks — many but not all of them scholars who write fiction — so I thought it might be helpful to talk a bit about why and how I do what I do.
Interpretation One.
One way to interpret the above advice is to concentrate on that verb waste. This would belittle one of the two career paths in favor of the other. In other words:
“If you gave up X, you would be more respected at Y!”
Perhaps so.
I do know there are Serious HistoriansTM who snicker about my seriousness as a scholar because I have written fantasy novels. This seems strange and narrow-minded to me, since I sure can’t imagine them saying the same thing about C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien. (Or maybe they do? I dunno.) But I also can’t deny that it’s a reality.
On the other side of the ledger, the fact that I have to spend so much time researching history means I don’t have time to go to cons and do all the social media connection-making that could (maybe?) lead to greater sales in the field of fiction. This, too, is a reality I can’t deny.
But I also can’t deny the reality that I enjoy writing both history and fantasy — and hosting documentaries, for that matter! Life is finite, and I don’t see a convincing reason to deny myself the joy of doing these things with the little time I’m given.
Interpretation Two.
The other way to interpret the above advice is to boil it down to an issue of productivity:
“If you gave up X, you could do more Y!”
I can certainly see how this would seem to make sense. I just don’t think it works this way for me. I already write at a fast pace — my next book will be number 22, I think? — and I wholly believe my productivity depends on my multi-tasking.
This is hard to articulate, but let me give it a shot by running through some (but hardly all) of the projects on my desk right now, in order of expected completion date. And of course I should note that all of this comes after time spent with my family (first priority) and my duties as a professor (my primary income):
- Current projects:
- Iceborn (fiction). The second book in the Seaborn Cycle. This is coming out 16 January in the UK, 1 April in the US. So mainly I’m just trying to post about it on social media.
- Chateau-Gaillard (documentary). A new show on History Hit. This is shot and through major edits, so I mainly just need to check and record the narration.
- Battle of Bouvines (documentary) A new show on History Hit. This is shot but still has edits and everything else ahead.
- Stormborn (fiction). The third book in the Seaborn Cycle. This is in copy-edits.
- A New Article on the Battle of Crécy (non-fiction). This one is done and accepted. Just waiting for copy-edits.
- A History of the Hundred Years War (non-fiction). This one is now in edits while I’m wrangling with images, captions, maps, and all the other good stuff that goes on behind the scenes of a Big Book like this.
- A Bunch of Other Documentaries (documentary). I’m in negotiations to shoot a number of documentaries over the next year. It takes a lot of time to review scripts, locations, and then shoot them.
- A Bunch of Other Articles (non-fiction). I’m in the middle of, well, a lot of other articles. Mostly medieval military history. But also a couple fun ones on medieval literary masterpieces.
- A Maybe-I-Am-Doing-This History (non-fiction). A publisher asked me to consider writing a new history of [REDACTED], and I’m 30,000 words into figuring out if I really want to take on something so controversial.
- A Science-Fiction Novel (fiction). This is an expansion of my short story “The Keeper Alone,” which I published years ago. I’m pretty far into it, though it’s not under contract so it’s no hurry at all.
Point is, I’m more or less working on a lot of things simultaneously, and I’ve long done so. Here’s the big secret to how this works:
I write what I’m ready to write.
Sure, sometimes I need to prioritize a project based on due dates and such, but for the most part I work on whatever project my mind is ready to work on in the moment. A couple days ago, that meant 4,000 words done on that [REDACTED] project. Yesterday, it was fiddling with an article involving medieval military technology. Today, I’m working on some things for that Hundred Years War book along with a few documentary bits here and there. Tomorrow … who knows?
Many writers live in fear of the blank page or of “writer’s block,” which is very often the result of not knowing what comes next. Whenever I face that uncertainty in a project, I shuffle stacks to a project for which I do know what comes next. By the time I stumble on that second project, my subconscious has typically figured out what to do on the first project … or what to do on a third or fourth project on my desk.
Even if it’s only by a little, something is moved forward just about every day. Over time, this means everything gets done. And to return to the starting point, I simply can’t imagine any single project getting done much faster if it was all I was doing. I just imagine being far more stressed about doing it!