“Am I willing to work on this for the next ten years?”

Whenever somebody pitches me something, including me pitching things to myself, I find myself asking “Am I willing to work on this for the next ten years?”

Cuz that’s how long I’ve been living with most of my successful projects.

I used to say “Let’s try it” a lot, but as this crisis has dragged on and I’ve had no choice but to look inside into the depths of my soul, I find that most of the things that have succeeded in my career had five years or more of build-up behind them, and I’ve been living with them for at least ten years.

I think you HAVE to say yes at first, because you need to grow your skill, find your voice, and develop a body of work that you can be proud of, which takes a lot of effort. In fact, the weight of a decade would stop most young artists from even starting anything at all, but over time all those yeses have gradually turned to nos for me.

Ichabod started production in 2010, came out in 2014, and I pushed it until 2017 before it took off. The second volume releases in September of 2020. TEN YEARS after I started it.

Katrina started production in 2011, came out in 2015, and took off in 2016. Then, Pixie Dust in 2017, and the Godsverse Chronicles in 2020, almost TEN YEARS after I started it.

It’s not just me, either. Almost everybody I know who’s been successful has been working on at least one project for over a decade or more.

I used to start projects willy-nilly not really thinking about the weight of what I was getting myself into, but the past year has taught me that every project has a life debt associated with it if you want it to be successful.

Even something like my anthology series started life in 2016, and I’ve lived with it for four years and three book releases.

It was immediately successful, which could happen, but it might be even WORSE if it’s successful because then you literally can’t abandon it and you’re forced to keep making things in that universe to keep paying your rent.

Those successful projects become what you’re known for, and what people expect of you.

I think about Arthur Conan Doyle a lot these days, a man who HATED Sherlock Holmes, tried to kill him off, raised his rates so high he assumed nobody would pay them, and became rich writing something he LOATHED.

There is now a statue of Sherlock Holmes across from Doyle’s house, mocking him for eternity.

That idea of it haunts me every day. Yes, I am having many ideas during this quarantine, but nothing I’m willing to live with for the next decade.

Aside from small anthology projects, I don’t think I’m going to be taking on much for a long time.