I remember thinking it seemed like a sound metaphor. Now, after all these years? I still think it’s pretty apt for what it’s like to be in a collection of thousands of other people, everyone typing on keyboards, setting stories to the page, and trying to navigate the various ways to get that material into the hands of readers.
A lot of things have changed over the last two decades. (Editing Jess add-on: So DARK LOVER is twenty years old this year—2025—but I’d actually published my first book in 2001 and had my first contract in late 1999/early 2000.) I used to do copyedits on printed pages. And send printed MSs into my editor. There used to be only authors. No traditional versus epub’d identifiers. (I am very pro self-pub’d and epub’d authors, btw. Everybody deserves to have their material published.) Tours were the only way to get nationwide exposure as there was no social media. No Goodreads. No Amazon with its review section. There weren’t even message boards and Yahoo Groups when I started (and just think, now those are not really done anymore). Oh, and Facebook? It wasn’t even a twinkle in Zuckerberg’s eye because he was, like, f*cking eleven years old at the time.
So yes, so much is different now. BUT that success ladder is still kind of a thing. I’ve seen authors come and go. I’ve seen people ascend to the stratosphere. I’ve seen writers lose their footing and fall. And it still freaks me out. Whether someone is up’ing or down’ing still freaks me out. Where I am on my ladder freaks me out. Everything freaks me out.
To be fair, that’s pretty common in writers, however. We do tend to be wired hot. I think that’s what enables us to tell stories that resonate. But again, that’s another digression.
Back to my ladder. These are the things that wake me up at two a.m.: Am I losing market share? Am I going to get fired? AmI earning out my advances? Do my readers still like my books? Will I still have a career in five years, in ten? (Editing Jess add-on: God, I mean, I wrote this post nine years ago. I wish I could go back and tell myself, yes, you’re going to be okay a decade later. Then again, now I’m worried about where I’ll be ten years from now. lololol) Who else is rocking it? Do I need to think differently, do differently, stop doing something?
Anyone who thinks that all that sh*t isn’t in my mind, just because I’ve hit the lists and have a trad publisher and have a track record is nuts. In large measure, I started writing these columns about my experiences because I had someone come up to me earlier in the year and be all, “Oh, you don’t have to worry about anything. You’re J. R. Ward.”
They didn’t mean it in a bad way. But it got me worried about the Instagram’ing of experience. It’s important for folks to know that we’re all the same. We all have our own ladders, and our own rungs that we stand on. We are all putting our hearts and souls on the line in our stories, and we get hurt by things, and we get exhausted, and we have self-doubt…and, and, and.
The fact that we all have these ladders, and they’re all lined up on the same ground—(Editing Jess add-on: Again, NO, they’re not.)—is a two-edged sword. It means we not only compare ourselves to where we’ve been and where we hope to be, we also are tempted to compare ourselves to everyone else.
Neither is a helpful strategy. At least it hasn’t been for me. It’s hard not to waste time on this, however, and in order to keep myself focused on writing and not the ladder, I’ve developed a short list of reminders to boot my own ass with:
1) It’s all about the work, not the ladder. This is Sue’s (Grafton) number-one rule for writing well. Time spent worrying about where your career is at in comparison with anyone else’s or even worrying whether you have a career ahead of you is time NOT writing. The work will move you up theladder. (Editing Jess add-on: Again, only in a perfect world where prejudice and discrimination isn’t a thing. So this is a problematic statement.) It is the only thing that will do that.
2) Everyone has their own ladder. Just because someone is ahead of you doesn’t mean they’ve figured it all out, or they’re a better writer, or they’re special. That’s their journey. A corollary to this is, just because you’ve taken a step back, doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Or you’re ruined. Or your dream is over. See also below.
3) Every rung is different and important and other people’s rungs are different than yours. (Editing Jess add-on: Again, this is VERY true, in more important ways than I go on to acknowledge—and the next paragraph feels pander-y to me now. I’m keeping it in, though, for the post’s point at large.) Wherever you are, get the most out of it. Are you starting out? Write the best book you can and see where it takes you. Are you in the middle? Keep trucking and refining your craft. Are you toward the end? Think of how you’d like to go out. No matter where you are or what speed you’re going at, make sure you learn the lessons that are before you. It’s not about making money and hitting lists, even though these one-dimensional trophies are a facile way of measuring success. What it’s really about is developing yourself and your skills wherever you are. NOTHING IS A WASTE OF TIME IF YOU’RE LEARNING.
4) Find a few trusted friends to steady your base. You don’t need a hundred. You need like one or two and a mentor. These are the people, when things get unbalanced—and they always do—who will keep you from falling off and having to go to the emergency room for spinal surgery.
I’ve gone a whole helluva lot farther than I thought I ever would, and I have every intention of continuing to put one foot up after the other. It’s not always easy, and I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve taken steps back and steps forward. I’ve had friends Ilove drop out of the business and strangers zoom past me and idols turn into friends. And you know what I love most about my ladder? It’s not the view. It’s not the rungs below me. It’s the sunshine on my back. No matter what rung I’ve been on, the fact that I love what I’m doing, even when it’s hard, has made my workday seventy degrees with fair skies. I think that, more than any elevation, is what keeps me coming back.
Do you love what you’re doing? Do you have to do it? Is it, at the end of the day, what you look forward to tomorrow, even if it’s scary?
Then you are on the right ladder.
Remember: believe, believe, believe. And magic happens in the real world.
Creating Real Characters…or the c-word that shalt never be used.
While I was at RWA this summer, I gave a panel (Ask Me Anything…J.R. Ward). There were a lot of good questions, and among the ones that lingered for me was one from a writer about creating believable characters. She asked how I did it, specifically in relation to making the Brothers so three-dimensional.
It’s a really important issue in manuscripts. Story is great, plotting is necessary, line by line chops are critical—but if you are truly going to reach your readers, the people inhabiting your world have to be flesh and blood. I think I do a fairly good job at this, but to be honest, as I have no control over my stories, I don’t feel like I’m “creating” characters. They just are people to me.
And that’s where I would start if you’re looking for help with the folks in your stories.
As I told the writer who asked the question, in my household, we do not use the c-word—and no, not as in C U Next Tuesday, but “character.” To me, the people in my stories are not constructs I have cobbled together. As the scenes come into my head, I see actual people in them, and in this regard, they have good parts and bad parts, sweet sides and aggressive sides, passion and apathy—the whole gamut of characteristics. I just record what they do.
I think if you want to create believable people, don’t think in terms of creating. Think in terms of stepping back and watching them. What do they gravitate toward? How do they express themselves? How does their affect change depending on who they are interacting with? Allowing them to breathe and be people, and show you who and what they are, is the only way it’s ever worked for me—although I freely concede that other people have different MOs.
And then after you’ve watched them in their own lives for a while, observe how they move and talk and make decisions within your story. Most writers start out with an idea or a scene and build from there. As you see them in your plotlines, what do they do? How do they treat people? Make choices? Handle stress? I always think of my BDB world as its own community, and as such, like any town, it has a whole host of different personalities in it (hello, Lassiter). It is the alchemy of these disparate, and at times, conflicting (hello, Lassiter) points of views and motivations that propel the stories forward. The thing is, the more interesting they are to you, the more interesting they should be to your reader. And the more you give them their rein, the more that you will find your story enriched by the unpredictable.
Like I’ve ever had any control over V, for example?
Now, I realize that it’s not like this for everyone. Some people construct their characters consciously and have great success with it, and for those who rock this, I’m curious—how does it work for you? And I’ve also heard there are computer programs out there to help with this? I’m honestly interested in learning the ways other people do it, because in truth, I feel like an idiot whenever it comes to inquiries like this. I want to be able to tell folks that there’s a concrete 1-2-3 I use, and I feel like a failure because I don’t know where the hell it all comes from. I also do not want to come across as anything special. What I am certainof, though, is that there are all kinds of ways that things work for people, and the right answer is the one that works for YOU.
Jeez, this is a short post. And see, this is why I suck at stuff like this—but I believe the people are at the core of any story, so it is more than worth discussion.
Marketing…or in other words, it’s still all about the work.
I spent most of last week at RWA National in NYC so a discussion about marketing seems particularly appropriate. As an aside, I’d like to thank all of the writers and readers who came up to me and said hello during the conference. I loved meeting so many new people, and I was blown away, yet again, by how kind and supportive folks can be.
Without further ado, I’d like to take you back to a spring weekend in 2004, right before the release of AN IRRESISTIBLE BACHELOR, the fourth and final Jessica Bird single title. My husband and I had recently moved from Boston to Louisville, and I had quit my job in healthcare. I had decided to try my hand at writing full time—and was praying that the signs of impending doom that I had been seeing were somehow wrong. Bottom line, I knew my writing career was in jeopardy. Over the course of the first three Jessica Bird books, I had watched my print runs go down with each new release. This was a clear sign I was not finding an audience.
