The 22 Steps Series: Final Thoughts
Success Equals Finishing
On November 5, 2023, I posted the first entry in this series, not knowing where it would take me. I was so excited to be a part of Substack, to be reinvigorating my blog, to commit to writing about writing. It was a grand experiment, one of those side gig things I tend to find myself doing. I didn’t think it through, not completely. I certainly didn’t know it would grow into such a huge component of my writing life. I just wanted to find a way to be value-add on this platform. The idea of asking people to pay for a blog post was anathema to me. I’d been blogging about writing for 20 years. It’s part of my mission—to share, to demystify, to help. To reach back down the ladder and pull new authors up the way the generation ahead of me did.
So I cooked up this 22 Steps concept as a way to make the project a serious one. If it were a paying gig, not something I was doing out of the goodness of my heart, I could justify the time and effort it would take to psychoanalyze the writing process of LAST SEEN.
While it might have started as just that, it has become so much more. The months of hard work began to pay dividends. I touched base with my earlier writer self, the ingenue who was just so damn happy to be in the game. I found the joy of the work and the sharing of that joy to be incredibly fulfilling. I wrote more. I wrote a lot, in fact.
In the intervening period, since I started writing this series in November of 2023, I have written four and a half books. By any measure, that’s a lot.
When I started, I had just turned in my 2024 novel, A VERY BAD THING, which then took a few months of editorial rounds (hence the half.) Also in the mix, the entirety of my 2025 novel, LAST SEEN, my 2026 novel, YOU KNOW WHY, and 2024’s final book in the Jayne Thorne series, THE SCROLLS OF TIME, under my pen name, Joss Walker. That was all going on in the background as I wrote this series, which is going to be a non-fiction craft book. Adding it all up, that is approximately 420,000 words of usable fiction and non-fiction across almost two years of work. That doesn’t seem possible to me, and yet here we are.
If the anecdotal evidence above is any measure, I’ve proven to myself what I’ve always known: Writing about writing works for me. The discipline of showing up is vital to any creative process—for me, the habit is almost a compulsion. I’ve “quit” blogging several times over the years, and always find myself back in the trenches.
And it proves my thesis of what success looks like to me in this fickle industry: FINISHING.
The more I finish, the more books there are to sell, to be read, to build the backlist. My magical bakery is getting stocked with loads of cupcakes. (This is from Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s wonderful metaphor of your writing life equating a magical bakery. If a reader walks past your magical bakery and sees only one cupcake in the storefront, they will assume you aren’t a very successful bakery. If they see dozens, of all flavors and varieties, they’re very likely to stop in for a sample. It’s a great example of the old adage, success begets success.)
All that said, as far as a paid blog, I haven’t decided where I want to go from here.
I may talk about self-publishing, or I may deep dive into my 2027 novel. I may add to this series as I take the rough draft blog posts and shape them into a craft book. I need to learn how to write a non-fiction proposal, rename the series, find my comps, etc., and that might be of interest. (If it is, let me know.) I don’t know if it’s going to be a traditionally published book or something I do through Two Tales, but it’s worth it to me to go through the process of writing the proposal and sending it to my agent for her thoughts. Where it goes from there, we shall see.
If you have ideas of things you’d like to see here, please don’t hesitate to let me know!
I am beyond grateful for you sticking with me, cheering me on, sharing with friends, and otherwise allowing me into your mailbox on a bi-monthly basis. I hope this has proven illuminating for you. It certainly has for me.
See you soon, friends. Thanks for being a part of this grand experiment!
This is the final post of my paid craft series delineating the 22 Steps of a novel’s lifecycle from concept to publication day, following my journey as I write my new novel, LAST SEEN. Start here if you’re new and you’d like to follow along in order, and if this is your free post, upgrade your subscription to get the entire series.
I’ve kept the post open to all my subscribers to gauge your interest in more bookish and writing content. If you’re a writer, or want to be, and you haven’t read the 22 Steps series, I highly recommend you do. If you have, please let me know if there’s more you’d like me to cover!