Cliff-migration exercises

An older post from Terrible Minds: A writing career is a series of cliff-migration exercises

Cliff-migration exercises! That’s a great way of saying whoops, didn’t see that coming.

People who want a writing career, here’s a thing you should know:

You’re always driving very fast toward a very high cliff. Not toward the wall at the bottom, but rather, rocketing toward the edge at the top. The precipice.

What I mean is this:

You get published with your first book, right? And it’s great. It’s roses falling from the sky, it’s a bubbly Champagne feeling in your nose, it’s a lightness to your step — an airy, giddy, level of triumph. And then you realize you’re not traipsing joyfully around a meadow, but rather, chained to the wheel of a fire-belching, fat-tired, steel-cage Apocalypse Car, and you’re barreling at top fucking speed toward what looks like the edge of the world.

I do think the bubbly Champagne stage lasts for a good while. Not sure it quite wears off. I certainly remember it vividly, and it’s been along time since The City in the Lake came out. But I do get what Chuck Wendig means here, about the cliff.

A career is one cliff after the next.

And in knowing that you are — after every book, every contract, every deal — driving ineluctably toward the next cliff, you have to figure out how you’re not going to die. Meaning, you’ve gotta spend the time rocketing toward the cliff performing some kind of… cliff mitigation technique. Choose whatever metaphor you like: installing rocket boosters in the car, hastily constructing a ramp that you will deploy via mobile trebuchet, training a flock of Canadian geese that you will anchor to your car in order to fly your ass over the edge and to the next butte or plateau ahead — whatever image you prefer, go for it. The point is that, your career is constantly in danger of crashing off a cliff. Your money will stop. The energy will slow and fade. You will be lost in the jungle next to the flaming wreckage of your vehicle.

Vivid, energetic metaphors from Chuck, as always. Hopefully the wreckage will not be flaming.

Regardless, cliffs! I think they are common. Especially because I bet — these days especially — nearly everyone who starts out with traditional publishing will eventually transition to self-publishing, and that experience will probably be somewhat cliff-like for almost everyone. I rather hope not to encounter too many more cliffs, in fact. I keep seeing that promotion services no longer work and Written Word Media is now almost a scam. So far, this does not seem true for me, so that is a cliff that I have not (yet) encountered. It’s true promo services aren’t as effective for me as they used to be. But the first time you promote with a big service, so that your book is new to their entire mailing list, obviously that service will be most effective. Plainly the effectiveness will decline later. What else would you expect?

I still haven’t actually taken any time to truly learn how to use ad platforms such as Amazon ads. Not in a hurry to do it. It would be a lot of trouble, and annoying. If I hit a real cliff with promo services, I guess I’ll see then about learning to fly.

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