Getting Mad, Baby! What angers you about writing?

[Paul Whybrow]

Since returning to creative writing three years ago, I've scrambled up several steep learning curves to do with the business of writing. These include formatting, book cover design, marketing the ebooks I self-published on Smashwords and Amazon and the all-important lessons in how to write a synopsis and query agents.

I'm about to begin another round of supplications to the 'gatekeepers', after spending the last two months editing my third novel. As we all know, that feels like wading through porridge, but there's still a barely discernible feeling of achievement in having polished a manuscript.

I'm at a stage where I feel like I've created a potentially commercial product—which is how I'm increasingly coming to view my novels—rather than taking joy in them as a readable story. Despite this confidence, I know I'm a nobody, an unpublished author looking for his first publishing contract. Any marketability I have, comes from where I live in Cornwall, which is popular as a holiday destination and from being the location of the successful television adaptation of Winston Graham's Poldark stories.

I know that some bestselling authors are poor writers, but what makes me mad is that were my manuscript submitted to the gatekeepers by a media celebrity (who's already got fame and wealth), then it would be snaffled up immediately. Commercially, it's the way of the world in publishing that someone with an existing high profile, a 'platform', will be more attractive a risk than someone anonymous who will take more effort to promote—but it still makes me mad!

It's proof that no one cares what you've written. Would-be readers are more enticed by already knowing who the author is, than anything to do with the quality of the story. As an example supermodel/supertwit Naomi Campbell has 'written' several novels and biographies—I don't know if she's read them!

That's what makes me angry—realising publishing is a business and has little to do with art.

How about you?

 

[KG Christopher]

I have empathy with you @Paul Whybrow and @Lex Black . I thought I would start querying 4 months ago for my first MS. But I did not feel confident in my ability. It will be rejected. So I refined and refined the work until now, 3 drafts later, I feel as if my MS is good enough to go out in the world. Before I started the writing thing, I was very confident. I have been telling stories -- good ones -- all my life. I was like a man with one watch. I was sure of the time. But now, every day I read something on the Interweb. 'You have to have your query letter in this format.' 'Make sure you don't send your MS written on Yellow paper.' 'You have to have 10,000 twiterrati or you will fail.' So now I am like a man with two watches; never sure of the time.

But you know what, screw the advice. If you don't you will always be unsure of yourself. I am going to query starting from this Monday. I will be successful, because my story is beautiful, everyone who reads it says its 'brilliant' and that's good enough for me. I shall have the confidence. I may not be able to walk down a catwalk like Naomi Cambell. But I would have the audience hanging on my every utterance if I told a story walking along side her.

So good luck Paul, you will succeed, grit your teeth and go for it. Keep me informed as I am starting to query this week.

Or... maybe I should have one more review of my MS. I did read about run-on sentences. I don't want to send it out with obvious mistakes. Yes, better get back in the cave and mull things over.

 

[Carol Rose]

What angers me about writing? Oh boy... When I first read the title of this thread, all sorts of things popped into my head. 80+ books and I'm making less and less in royalties with each passing year. The fact that I'm no longer sure I *can* write, or at least can write anything that would capture attention outside the tiny little niche market I've shoved myself into. Time is my worst enemy, and I'm YEARS from being able to stop working and write full time. Let me offer the perspective of someone who has been playing this game now for almost six years. These are the things that anger me the most about writing.

Not everyone can write. It's true. If there is no raw talent there to begin with, if the person doesn't understand sentence structure, plot structure, character development, or basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling, if they can't tell a cohesive story - even verbally - they do not have "writing" talent. At least, not fiction writing talent. It angers me because Amazon has made it possible for literally ANYONE to "publish" a book. The book reading public is now so used to reading stuff that would make your English teachers have a coronary that they don't know the difference between garbage and an actual well-written book. As a consequence, the rest of us are left to compete with dino-porn and the likes of certain pseudo-BDSM books that struck the right chord with the right person at the right time. Yeah. Good luck with that, because most of us are left in the dust by this crap.

Authors who build up street teams that are little more than thinly-disguised gangs of virtual thugs who go around one-starring books in the same genre on Goodreads and Amazon, who bully other authors that might draw some attention away from *their* author, who bully readers that don't worship *their* author, and who go after any author or reader, for that matter, en masse, that dares to speak out against the horrible author's behavior, or who dares to expose it. SAY WHAT??? It's true. I swear to you, it is. And totally ridiculous. When I find that crap going on, I block the parties and walk away. Can't even wrap my head around nonsense like that.

I agree with @Paul Whybrow that publishing is now a business. Any "art" in it seems to have gone the wayside. You might find it here and there, tucked into a dusty corner, but in genre fiction... forget it. It's all about the Amazon ranking. And in romance, good lord. Not only is it all about the Amazon ranking, but if you can write ONE book that captures attention, and then keep writing the same book again and again, changing not much more than the character's names and a few details, you'll be a USA Today and NYT best seller. What total crap. Those of us who like to try something different, and who strive to make each book unique - even in a long-running series - are left in the dust.

 

[do do Ron Ron]

I'm standing in a field, at night, waiving a flag that says 'notice me'. But I'm being utterly ignored. "After due consideration, we feel we are not the best agent to represent you, we can not critique your work". Consequently I have absolutely no idea if I'm wasting my time of if I'm on to something.
Do I turn and trudge back to my home, or do I walk ahead towards the faint, distant but discernible flashing neon lights on the horizon?
No answer is much much worse than an answer- even if it's' don't, what ever you do, give up the day job. That's what annoys me.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I'm not angry. I've spend over a decade off and on working on one novel. 6 years off and on with another, and there's a defunct one in a drawer that Sophie Hannah said might appeal to the crime market. I can't be angry, thinking of Keats and his despair, dying disappointed, saying here lies one whose words were writ on water. Talent is one thing. Timing, fashions in taste and luck another. I'm not in it for money; a royalty trickle for my bratz would be lovely of course after I pop off, but I want to entertain and engross.

I might be angry if I worked as hard as Carol does, and saw only diminishing royalties. It's clear to me she has a proven market but could release her muse/daemon to write other kinds of book, for other markets, and quite possibly hit a publishing bulls eye with something completely different.

I'm not angry if I don't place my work. I sense that I will eventually, mind, but I accept it's a tall order. We writing dreamers are legion. Books are business. I know I can go other routes with them if I want and get them into print at least, to gather dust in an attic. And I rate that an illustrious fate. So many great stories begin with something dusty in the attic. Did not that happen to Bach's Passion of St Matthew until it came into the hands of Mendelssohn and he rescued it from oblivion.

There is Art, there is Business. In writing, Art may rule, but in publishing the two must coincide. Great story telling does not have to be Art, though it's got to pipe a tune enough rats want to follow.

(I like rats)

Not plague ones of course. The rat above, I drew for a short story. It has died of Teutonic Plague on a B & Ono Ferry.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

What is that saying--Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome? Yeah. That's me with querying for the past two years. Three novels rejected again and again. But instead of getting angry (well, okay, in addition to getting angry), I've decided to stop being insane. I set myself a deadline--if I have no strong interest in the latest novel by the end of the year, I'm jumping with both feet into the indie publishing world. My attitude toward self-published books has not softened much--I still think the majority are poorly edited junk--but I'm seeing less and less real benefit to be had from a traditional publishing contract. I've got a good network of editors, illustrators, and designers, and I'm developing a business and marketing plan. It will be all go for 2017, whether or not an agent or publisher wants my books.

I can't tell you how terrified I am. But it's made me feel so much better, knowing I'm not beholden to the gatekeepers.

 

[do do Ron Ron]

What is that saying--Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome? Yeah. That's me with querying for the past two years. Three novels rejected again and again. But instead of getting angry (well, okay, in addition to getting angry), I've decided to stop being insane. I set myself a deadline--if I have no strong interest in the latest novel by the end of the year, I'm jumping with both feet into the indie publishing world. My attitude toward self-published books has not softened much--I still think the majority are poorly edited junk--but I'm seeing less and less real benefit to be had from a traditional publishing contract. I've got a good network of editors, illustrators, and designers, and I'm developing a business and marketing plan. It will be all go for 2017, whether or not an agent or publisher wants my books.

I can't tell you how terrified I am. But it's made me feel so much better, knowing I'm not beholden to the gatekeepers.

Very brave Robinne...good luck. I started and ran a business (utterly unrelated the the reasons we are here) for some years. tough but rewarding.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Yes, I ran a business for 10 years before giving it all up to write. I'm afraid I hate running my own business...but it seems to be what I'm destined to do.

 

[do do Ron Ron]

Writers are essentially self employed anyway, so no great change in circumstances, don't you think?

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Yep. The real change for me was that now I'm writing what I want to write, not what my clients want me to write...Oh, that and I don't get paid for it anymore

But given that I think I'd have started swearing at my clients if I had continued, it's a fair trade in my opinion.