Fast Publication?

Are writers who take years to publish better writers than those who publish frequently?

I’m asking for myself because I hear this fairly often. Because I hear this often, I assume the statement is targeted at me. I might be the target because over the last four years, I’ve published four books. (Thank you, Moon Tide Press). By some literary standards this looks like frequent publishing.

Maybe I’m just sensitive.

Maybe I’m feeling imposter syndrome.

Maybe I’m looking for another reason to doubt myself, my work, my worth.

I want to dismantle the myth around “fast publishing.”

When I say, Publishing, I mean the traditional path: agents or indie publishers or university presses, etc.

Should it take a writer years between each major publication?

That depends.

How frequently and consistently a writer is published depends on how frequently and consistently a writer writes.

Let’s play with numbers.

I pen a poem or an essay every day.

EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

I do not claim to write a decent or even logical poem or essay each day. But if you write 365 poems or essays a year and you use basic stats with a five percent return, 18.5 of your pieces, about 20 poems or essay, should churn into something close to publishable.

And the number of pieces a writer submits will have a similar return rate, between 5-10%. If you submit ten poems a year or 220…well you do the math.

Literary publishing is a numbers game.

You might compare successful publishing to dating or gambling or job-searching. I compare it to high-level athletic training. To become a seasoned athlete, you show up, you push through the reps, you eat the science-based proportional meals, you rest.

When I was at the height of my “game,” competing on the national and international stages in SportAerobics, I trained six hours a day, six days a week. No matter. I did this for eight years.

There’s a science behind conditioning at high levels.

Maybe there’s a similar science behind publishing at high levels too.

Naturally, athletic discipline transferred into my writing life. Into my life. Perhaps my time in service, eight years in the United States Air Force, also conditioned my mind-body approach to writing (and to life) as well.

Athletic and military training did not feel like punishment. I loved the challenges. I loved testing my body and brain. I loved discovering what I was made of.

Writing with discipline does not equate to harshness, torture, or punishment. At least not to me.

I mostly love what writing offers me: self-understanding, self-awareness, healing, compassion, and empowerment.

I never write with the intention of publication. I never write thinking of an audience. My first draft is simply to write. To write for me. Only me. I write to sort through my life. I write to understand my wounds. I write to unbury pieces of me that I’ve hidden for years. I write to unleash my holy rage. I write to pour my gratitude onto the page. I write to find language so I can unsilence my silenced self.

Sorry, let’s return to numbers.

Say, a month later, while shaping and revising the childhood sexual trauma book, you sort through your files regarding your son and his medical challenges, and you notice, Oh! Here. This might be a book-length poem.

While working on the childhood sexual trauma book and the book-length poem, you still write a poem or essay every day. You still discover and challenge, flex and stretch your writerly self.

This.

My little writing life tucked in a small corner of Star, Idaho.

On the outside, it looks as if I’m churning out a book almost yearly or publishing poems or essays every few months. I mean, I am. That’s true. What you don’t see is the years of material accumulation. What you don’t see is the training of a seasoned writer. Let’s face it, when you train consistently, you improve your game.

This is true of dance, gymnastics, running the 400 (all events I fared well).

This is also true of writing.

On the outside, it looks like I’m new to the writing game. I guess I am with my first lit journal publication in 2017. But my publishing life launched while serving in that military, age 19, 1985. That equals 40 years of time working with editors, review boards, publishers. 40 years fueled with rigor, fact-checking, and editorial feedback.

40 years later, and I still write into the gap, still ferociously and unflinchingly fight systems and methods to create magic: placing language where none existed.

I’m not the same writer.

I am the same writer.

I’m not writing the same story.

I’m forever writing that same story.

Am a I good writer?

I couldn’t say.

It’s subjective measure. And since it’s subjective, how frequently work is published should not be part of the equation. What should be part of the equation is the quest of writing. The why. The intention. Perhaps we pause and consider, The world of publishing for a writer is an “On the Outside,” story.

If I circle back to my original question, Are writers who take years to publish better writers than those who publish frequently?

After considering my 40-year journey, I wonder if anyone publishes anything “frequently.”