What are the biggest challenges of being a novelist?Utsudo sees three big challenges: constantly staying visible to keep yourself in the game, financial hardship, and building a community and personal brand. Her advice to newcomers: start building your community as soon as possible, network and collaborate and submit often, and produce as much work as you can while improving its quality.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

Self-introduction and debut story

　　First, as is customary, came a self-introduction — blood type, zodiac sign, birth chart — (not needed). In short, I briefly introduced my pen name, my strengths as a writer, and my current track record in the industry, so they’d feel that spending thirty minutes listening to the person on stage wouldn’t be a waste of time XD

　　Next I told my debut story… though I basically glossed over the hardships. You can check them out here:my bitter debut story, including being stood up by a publisher, enduring all kinds of harsh criticism from editors, and so on. After recounting the bumpy road, I summed up my thoughts.

　　— In this line of work, success or failure is easily swayed by factors beyond your control. Luck matters, but it’s not something we can control — should we go burn incense and pray to Buddha? Of course not. Do what you can within your own power, and leave the rest to fate Q口Q

　　I don’t want to be so passive either, but if you can be a bit zen about it, it’s easier to adjust emotionally when you get a rejection letter or something falls through and you can’t publish.

　　Don’t blame yourself for other people’s problems, and don’t rail against the world over it either. The only thing we can do is try our best to write the story we think is most perfect, so we can live with ourselves — that’s all.

The three big challenges of being a novelist

　　Next, so everyone would understand the difficulties of being a novelist, I had to bring this up too. Personally, I think the hardest parts are:

1.    Constantly staying visible and finding ways to stay in the game

　　This one should be obvious: we have to keep producing work, whether posting online or publishing books, to tell readers “I’m still alive” XDDD, and build as much presence in the industry as we can. Practice makes familiar — accumulating more exposure pays off in the end.

2.    Financial hardship

　　In Taiwan, over 90% of creators basically have a main job, but some make creating their main focus with part-time work on the side (I’m one of them).

The advantage of the former is a more stable income and more breathing room for creating, but the downside is lower output. Get a little too comfortable and your output may be delayed indefinitely… ahem, though of course some creators balance it very well XD

The latter’s advantage is being able to put most of your energy into creating without burning through your savings, though you may be stretched thin at any moment. The upside is faster output and a better chance to respond more actively in this fiercely competitive industry. Comparatively, the odds of breaking through should be a bit higher (setting aside luck and talent XD).

3.    Building a community

　　Simply put, it’s building your own brand. Easier said than done — it takes huge amounts of effort and time and still might not work. Facebook fan pages used to get pretty good reach, but over the past few years it’s kept dropping — they’re practically forcing us to buy ads, sob~

Prices go up, royalties don’t, and they want us to buy ads — what the f— (beep—

　　Ahem, but fan pages, websites and such are still necessary so you can interact with your readership anytime. And speaking of which, many creators actually prefer to wander in their own little worlds, but in this era, many creators have become influencers and must find new paths forward…

So many creators who aren’t good at socializing can’t help but wail: creating keeps us busy enough, why do we have to deal with people too? Can’t I just be a loner? Hmph, bite me (just kidding

　　Forced by the times, we can only keep adjusting our course for our dreams. Otherwise, I too used to be someone who liked hiding creepily behind the computer, hoping to create quietly my whole life XDDD

　　It depends on what you choose;I plan to get as close to my dream as I can XD

Three tips for newcomers

　　After introducing all that, next came some advice for these little lambs. I recommended mainlythree things：

1.    Start building your community ASAP

　　This should be pretty straightforward: the earlier you build your brand, the better. It’s fine even if growth or popularity is slow — learn and explore through mistakes,and someday you’ll shed your sense of shame bit by bit like me (X

2.    Network, collaborate often, submit often

　　Connections really matter — as someone who started from nothing, I understand this deeply… Collaborating with like-minded people is also a lot of fun! Besides that, submit often and try to land chances to work with the industry while you’re still in school, so you won’t suffer, like I did in my dark period, the level-10 psychological trauma of being looked down on by relatives XDD

Frankly, I can’t forget it even if I try. Even though they come to support me now, behind my smile there’s still a bit of a knot… I don’t want you dream-chasers to carry that kind of shadow too QQ

3. Produce as much as you can, and improve the quality

　　Just as it says: if you don’t prepare your ammo, how can you go wildly knocking on publishers’ doors? Wait wait wait — put down that phone. I mean, if you don’t prepare polished manuscripts and try many times, how will you build presence with publishers XDDD

　　Those were the main points. After that I shared some things from my childhood, like how I originally wanted to be a manga artist but accidentally strayed onto the path of becoming a novelist, and the tough outlook for the novel industry today…

　　Give a little dream, then add a dose of reality.

　　Only dreams that can withstand reality truly shine.

FAQ

Further reading (in Chinese)

• Previous: #34 (in Chinese)
• Next: #36 (in Chinese)
• Start from the beginning: #01 — Utsudo’s debut
• Column introduction
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.

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