I have this writer friend...

And she's struggling.

For every happy publishing milestone that an author announces on social media, there is another author (or twelve) who has nothing splashy to share. Worse still, there’s probably others who have just received less than ideal news, or maybe even bad news.

Take this friend of mine, for example. She is having a really rough go. She’s trying to make a big pivot and break into a new genre/audience group, but no editors are biting.

Struggling to sell a book? Don’t most writers deal with that? Yes. For sure. But this friend also had a long stretch of bad luck leading up to this attempted big pivot. An mg partial and proposal that her editor wanted to move in one direction and she couldn’t quite make work, so she shelved. Another YA proposal rejected by a different long-time editor because sales of earlier books in the series weren’t strong enough to warrant another. A couple early reader/chapter books that went nowhere. Same with a picture book. Oh, and there was also full YA ms that she even did an R&R for but still didn’t get an offer on despite the editor praising the revision.

This author friend then jumped to a WFH opportunity and snagged the job after auditioning with a sample. A packager paid her a small sum to write a 100p partial to take out on sub, and finally—finally—she had a book sell. In a two book deal, no less! The advance was very, very modest, but it was a book deal! She was ecstatic. She’d finally be able to have another book in the world. The terms of the deal were negotiated and she started writing the rest of the manuscript while waiting for the contract to come through. (Publishing contracts take months after all, and she is a very proactive, stay-on-top-of-things author.)

But this author is currently trying to pivot, so something must have gone awry, right? Unfortunately, yes. About eight months after that WFH book deal was first negotiated and accepted, her agent called to say that the publisher had suddenly decided to only do in-house IP projects. Since my friend still didn’t have a contract for this book deal, it evaporated. A two book deal and the income that was supposed to come with it just… gone. Worse still, the idea belonged to the packager, so it wasn’t like the author’s agent could take the book back out to new editors. The main contact at the packager would have to do that and surprise!—the packager abruptly closed their publishing arm to focus on stories for screen, firing the author’s contact there in the process. Her completed mg manuscript now had nowhere to go.

Hence her intended pivot. Which… is looking like it may not get the chance to launch.

My friend is tired. She doesn’t want to stop writing, but she also feels like she’s being pushed out. There doesn’t seem to be a place for her—or at least for the last 6ish projects she’s put forward—in the traditional publishing landscape.

She went back to work recently because financially, she had to. She’s doing freelance design on the side, in addition to her new job. She’s trying to decide if she has it in her—emotionally and mentally—to write another novel only to experience potential heartbreak again. And she’s not sure she wants to move to self-publishing either. She explored that route recently, and she knows just how much hustle is necessary to succeed in that space.

If you’ve started to wonder if this friend is me, congrats. You’re right.

It’s indeed me.

I’m the author.

And look, I’ve experienced rejection before. I’m not new to it. But I’ve never experienced it quite like this—just blow after blow for 4+ years worth of projects.

I don’t intend to stop writing, but I share all this today because I do think I need to stop writing on Substack for a bit. I love all my readers dearly, but it’s become somewhat uncomfortable to upkeep this newsletter the last few years.

In the past, I’ve used my newsletter to talk generally about writing and publishing, but I would also share what I was working on and discuss how my current draft/revision for contracted work was progressing. Except… I have not had a contracted work for ages now. And all the new work I wanted to talk about continued to die before I could secure a deal. I have deliberately not shared my setbacks on here, instead tucking each one away with the mindset that “maybe I can talk about that later down the road… Once I have good news, maybe I can share some more insights into X happening and frame it all in a positive, helpful light.” But instead, I just keep amassing more roadblocks, more things I’m not comfortable talking about in complete transparency (which is fine and 100% my choice), but it’s made maintaining this newsletter complicated. In terms of how I feel about it, in terms of how I figure out content to cover—all of it.

On top of all this, my time is just very limited these days. Between parenting, my day job, freelance design work, and still trying to cram writing in, I am stretched thin. As such, my plan is to put this newsletter’s biweekly posting schedule on indefinite hold. I will pause paying subscriptions during this time too, starting today. I may still post if a great topic strikes or I have something I want to share, but for the most part, I imagine going silent for a bit so that I can use my time most efficiently and, perhaps, make peace with all the setbacks I mentioned above. (This is something I’ve been trying to do these past few years but it’s been hard. Some days I feel like I’ve made progress. Other days I just feel jaded and bitter.)

TLDR; I need to step back from my newsletter. Probably not forever. But definitely for right now.

While I’m “gone,” I intend to keep writing. Maybe the next time I pop on here I’ll have good news. Or maybe not. You just never know. As I said in this Reflections a Decade After Debut post, “continuing to write is a shared variable across many outcomes.” Just because you don’t give up does not guarantee anything.

But I’ll keep hoping. And I hope you’ll hang around in the meantime. I’d love for my next newsletter to land in your inbox, whenever that may be.

Until next time, friends,

Erin Bowman is the critically acclaimed author of numerous books for children and teens, including the Taken Trilogy, Vengeance Road, Retribution Rails, the Edgar Award-nominated Contagion duology, The Girl and the Witch’s Garden, and Dustborn. A web designer turned author, Erin has always been invested in telling stories—both visually and with words. Erin lives in New Hampshire with her husband and children.