Be Patient, but Don’t Wait
Co-authors Karl Buechner, Jeremy Mueller, and Keith Ward share the importance of being patient as writers even as you do the work.
We write together, the three of us. We’ve been told it’s odd. Different, they say. Probably is, but it’s just how we have always done the work. More often than not, it’s how we prefer it.
We have a punk-rock relationship to composition. We write daily, fail fast, and are willing to accept a better idea. Maybe this method of collaboration is inevitable when a rockstar (Buechner), craftsman (Mueller), and teacher (Ward) decide to write a book together?
Good, bad, or other, having three people in the room to tell stories means we never have to find someone to give us notes. There are plenty of opinions in the writing room and we are quick to share them. Our friendship helps drive us, and honestly it’s nice to have each other to lean on.
A few weeks ago our first book in a three book series, The Unraveling The Counsel of Crows was published by Th3rd World Studios with distribution from Simon and Schuster. We are even luckier because Recorded Books picked up our project and will release the audiobook on July 15, 2025. Talk about dreams coming true, right?
Beneath the seeming miracle of getting a great publisher, distribution, a PR firm, and an audio book lies one of the simplest and most difficult realities of writing: we had to be extremely patient. None of this was served to us overnight. To be clear there is a difference between being patient and waiting.
We worked for seven years with no promise of publication. We wrote and drafted, edited and redrafted. We found an artist to illustrate our book and he created an outstanding book cover (even before we had a publisher). We started our social media presence, paid someone to design a website and called everyone we knew to offer insight into our project. We secured domains, email handles, found beta readers, and pull quotes for our book. In short, we were patient, but we didn’t wait for someone to do this for us.
Writer’s are told to believe in their work. Believe against all odds that your work is worth it. We like that idea, but we might suggest clarifying the word belief. Belief in the absence of action isn’t worth all that much.
If we’d simply believed in our characters and the settings they inhabit while waiting for someone else to bring them to readers we bet we’d still be waiting around. We thought once our book arrived on shelves and was available at all the online chains we could sit back and enjoy the view.
Nope.
That’s not a thing.
The day the book dropped was when the really hard work started. In addition to writing the series we were also booking podcasts, bookstore and school talks, signings, conventions… Oh Lord, it keeps us busy.
Believe mightily in your work, and take the action necessary to allow others to believe too. And keep believing and acting for months after your book comes out. It sounds difficult, we know, but take heart writer friend, we offer this advice because we found that we could do it. Swear on our moms, if we can you certainly can.
Check out Buechner, Mueller, and Ward's The Unraveling The Counsel of Crows here:
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