When You’ve Written Lots of Books

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

At some point in 2024, I hit 60 books. That’s 60 original books that I’ve penned. The only reason I noticed this is because my family kept asking me how many mysteries I’d written until I sat down and actually counted them up.

I didn’t mark this milestone because I didn’t realize when I’d reached it, and I’m past it now. But it did make me take a moment to reflect.

Here are some things I’ve learned about having written 60+ books

As I mentioned, you probably won’t know how many books you’ve written. The point isn’t the volume, it’s the attempt to continue producing quality content. But the volume is often what sets you apart in readers’ minds.

You have to try harder to make sure you’re not repeating old ideas. You try to remember if you’ve used a character name before and whether it’s been recent.

You worry that you’re overloading your beta readers and editors when you’ve written a lot in a single year.

You rely heavily on series bibles. They’re key to helping you remember your character smoked as a young person or that they prefer driving minivans to sedans.

You’re watchful for burnout. Burnout can sneak up on you, and it’s ugly when it strikes.

You feel strange when you take a break from writing. Restless.

Writing becomes almost muscle memory. You sit down, open your document, and just hop right in. Your routine makes this easy.

It becomes harder to consider changing genres, if the bulk of your output has been in a single genre.

You have a very clear picture of what your upcoming writing year will consist of. You might already have covers and outlines.

You might like to think of yourself as prolific. Others will say you’re “churning out books.”

You don’t spend much or any time looking at reviews. Ditto for sales.

Readers will be surprised when you don’t remember details about the last book you wrote, much less a book you wrote 10 years earlier.

Writing gets easier and easier, but you still occasionally get hung up on a scene when you’re writing.

You still look forward to writing every day.

What have you learned during your writing journey?

 

When You've Written Lots of Books:
Share on X

Image by Lubos Houska from Pixabay

The post When You’ve Written Lots of Books appeared first on Elizabeth Spann Craig.