Why most fail as authors...discussion

[Stephen Drake]

Well then, I say it's time for an ICE CREAM SANDWICH PARTY!

Sounds like an excellent idea! I love Ice Cream Sandwiches...always have, always will!
EDIT: And Creamsicles...

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Woo hoo! Here I come! Party at Nicole's place!

 

[Alistair Roberts]

Can you have too many ice creams?

Never, absolutely never, especially if it's NZ ice-cream

 

[Marc Joan]

People like @Carol Rose or @Marc Joan, who are farther in the process than we are, are good resources to have because they can provide tips for various circumstances.

Steady on. Carol is a source of wisdom and anecdote, but I am just stumbling blindly along. I have only had some short stories published, and it's easier to get them accepted by magazines than it is to get a novel accepted by an agent or publisher. And the by the way, Kitty has published three times as many short stories as me. Probably on the back of one third of the rejections that I have accumulated.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

As an example of persevering, Ruth Galm is a great example, for it took her years to escape the slush pile. As she says:

"Did I want to stop writing since it was likely I would not get published. The answer was emphatic, kneejerk, maybe masochistic. No. No, I never wanted to stop writing."

"And this is when I crossed to the other side. The side where I understood that I would write for myself, without the prospect of publication, and that publishing was a business separate from writing."

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/...906-on-writing-rejection-and-persistence.html

There's a tendency for the public to view any successful artist as an overnight success, whereas we all know that most writers, actors, singers and crafts folk have been slogging away for years making fine work that simply wasn't recognised. I'm referring to righteous artists here, not jumped-up, corporation manufactured twerps from the celebrity factory; they are the human equivalent of junk food.

When I wonder about why I write, and is there any real point to it all, I remember a quote from John Greenleaf Whittier, an influential Quaker poet and abolitionist:

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”
― John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller - Pamphlet

 

[Carol Rose]

Steady on. Carol is a source of wisdom and anecdote, but I am just stumbling blindly along. I have only had some short stories published, and it's easier to get them accepted by magazines than it is to get a novel accepted by an agent or publisher. And the by the way, Kitty has published three times as many short stories as me. Probably on the back of one third of the rejections that I have accumulated.

Hey, acceptances are still acceptances, dude!!

 

[Marc Joan]

Hey, acceptances are still acceptances, dude!!

Easy for you to say that!

 

[James Marinero]

I haven't researched this so there's no link this is purely for us to reflect on improving our chances at becoming authors. It's a depressing title but it's one of fact...would you not agree?

The hundreds of thousands...dare I say millions of potential authors submitting and self-publishing. Yet many fail at achieving a permanent job as an author... assuming the idea is to be a self-sustaining author as a job and retiring on royalties .

There's a book right there!!

I just finished reading 'The World According to Garp' by John Irving. It's a very creative story about a man who wants to become a writer. Irving is a successful novelist and I wondered about how much of his own approach to writing was reflected in the book. I'm not even in the same species as them.

 

[Damian North]

I read a book several years ago - I forget the title - Young author in New York who tries to become a writer. He works as a waiter but during the day struggles to get that one idea that would make his dream happen. One day his roommate is found dead, walking into the room the aspiring writer discovers that his roommate has been secretly writing a novel - he reads it and it's brilliant. Guess what? That's right he steals the novel, passes it off as his own and it becomes an international bestseller. Unfortunately for him, someone unbeknown to him knows his secret and exposes him for the fraud that he is.

 

[Meerkat]

I personally don't think there should be any shame to say that being paid for what you love and making it a primary target to make a sustainable living off of it.

Oh, I don't think there's any shame. The worker is worth his wage. I am just really, really indifferent to money. It's not that I think I'm a "true artist" who is going to suffer for her art, capitalist bourgeosie be damned! No, it really is that I have a complete indifference to the stuff.

I grew up EXTREMELY poor; once we rented a log cabin in the Wisconsin woods that only had one wood furnace, and I remember my dad staying up all night to feed it with wood. Another time we rented this filthy place with no heating system at all--it got so cold at night that we'd put bricks in the gas oven, heat them up, and put them in the bed with us to keep us warm (old New England trick). We were the family that people at church brought food and clothes for.

For the longest time, this didn't really bother me. Then, when I was maybe 20, I really started to resent being poor. The big American myth is that if you work hard, you'll make money, and if you're poor, it's because you don't work hard. Well, I worked hard, but I was broke. My dad worked like 80 hours a week, and my family was still broke. So, then, I said to myself, "Look, you know it might never change. You might always be poor. So you'd better learn not to want anything."

And I trained myself not to want anything. Because I figured, if I'm always thinking about what I don't have, I'll never be happy with what I do have. I trained myself, when I went to the grocery store, to NOT see things other than what was on my list of food to cook. I never went to any other store, and I didn't watch TV (so no ads to lure me) or read magazines with ads.

I reached the point where I honestly didn't care if I had any money ever. Somehow, there's always been money for what I do need. Even when I didn't have health insurance and was making 12k a year at my three jobs, I still was able to go to doctor appointments.

Also, strangely, people like to give me their castoffs. I've never actually had to buy anything more expensive than one nice pair of shoes--my only "nice" pair of shoes! I don't ask for these things; people just offer them to me.

So yeah, hey, if someone wants to write me a check for one of my pieces, I won't refuse it, but when I'm looking at markets to submit to, I don't even look at what they pay or if they pay. It just isn't something I think about. I'm not any better or worse than writers who hope to make money--it's just how I am.

 

[Marc Joan]

Meerkat - there's a book right there. Maybe two.

 

[Marc Joan]

Oh, I don't think there's any shame. The worker is worth his wage. I am just really, really indifferent to money. It's not that I think I'm a "true artist" who is going to suffer for her art, capitalist bourgeosie be damned! No, it really is that I have a complete indifference to the stuff.

I grew up EXTREMELY poor; once we rented a log cabin in the Wisconsin woods that only had one wood furnace, and I remember my dad staying up all night to feed it with wood. Another time we rented this filthy place with no heating system at all--it got so cold at night that we'd put bricks in the gas oven, heat them up, and put them in the bed with us to keep us warm (old New England trick). We were the family that people at church brought food and clothes for.

For the longest time, this didn't really bother me. Then, when I was maybe 20, I really started to resent being poor. The big American myth is that if you work hard, you'll make money, and if you're poor, it's because you don't work hard. Well, I worked hard, but I was broke. My dad worked like 80 hours a week, and my family was still broke. So, then, I said to myself, "Look, you know it might never change. You might always be poor. So you'd better learn not to want anything."

And I trained myself not to want anything. Because I figured, if I'm always thinking about what I don't have, I'll never be happy with what I do have. I trained myself, when I went to the grocery store, to NOT see things other than what was on my list of food to cook. I never went to any other store, and I didn't watch TV (so no ads to lure me) or read magazines with ads.

I reached the point where I honestly didn't care if I had any money ever. Somehow, there's always been money for what I do need. Even when I didn't have health insurance and was making 12k a year at my three jobs, I still was able to go to doctor appointments.

Also, strangely, people like to give me their castoffs. I've never actually had to buy anything more expensive than one nice pair of shoes--my only "nice" pair of shoes! I don't ask for these things; people just offer them to me.

So yeah, hey, if someone wants to write me a check for one of my pieces, I won't refuse it, but when I'm looking at markets to submit to, I don't even look at what they pay or if they pay. It just isn't something I think about. I'm not any better or worse than writers who hope to make money--it's just how I am.

And I can really relate to this. I live in a part of the UK where people tend to measure you by your possessions. It's tiresome.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I read a book several years ago - I forget the title - Young author in New York who tries to become a writer. He works as a waiter but during the day struggles to get that one idea that would make his dream happen. One day his roommate is found dead, walking into the room the aspiring writer discovers that his roommate has been secretly writing a novel - he reads it and it's brilliant. Guess what? That's right he steals the novel, passes it off as his own and it becomes an international bestseller. Unfortunately for him, someone unbeknown to him knows his secret and exposes him for the fraud that he is.

This sounds like the plot of 'The Words', a not very good film starring Bradley Cooper, which was in turn stolen from a German novel called 'Lila, Lila.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Words_(film)

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Oh, I don't think there's any shame. The worker is worth his wage. I am just really, really indifferent to money. It's not that I think I'm a "true artist" who is going to suffer for her art, capitalist bourgeosie be damned! No, it really is that I have a complete indifference to the stuff.

I grew up EXTREMELY poor; once we rented a log cabin in the Wisconsin woods that only had one wood furnace, and I remember my dad staying up all night to feed it with wood. Another time we rented this filthy place with no heating system at all--it got so cold at night that we'd put bricks in the gas oven, heat them up, and put them in the bed with us to keep us warm (old New England trick). We were the family that people at church brought food and clothes for.

For the longest time, this didn't really bother me. Then, when I was maybe 20, I really started to resent being poor. The big American myth is that if you work hard, you'll make money, and if you're poor, it's because you don't work hard. Well, I worked hard, but I was broke. My dad worked like 80 hours a week, and my family was still broke. So, then, I said to myself, "Look, you know it might never change. You might always be poor. So you'd better learn not to want anything."

And I trained myself not to want anything. Because I figured, if I'm always thinking about what I don't have, I'll never be happy with what I do have. I trained myself, when I went to the grocery store, to NOT see things other than what was on my list of food to cook. I never went to any other store, and I didn't watch TV (so no ads to lure me) or read magazines with ads.

I reached the point where I honestly didn't care if I had any money ever. Somehow, there's always been money for what I do need. Even when I didn't have health insurance and was making 12k a year at my three jobs, I still was able to go to doctor appointments.

Also, strangely, people like to give me their castoffs. I've never actually had to buy anything more expensive than one nice pair of shoes--my only "nice" pair of shoes! I don't ask for these things; people just offer them to me.

So yeah, hey, if someone wants to write me a check for one of my pieces, I won't refuse it, but when I'm looking at markets to submit to, I don't even look at what they pay or if they pay. It just isn't something I think about. I'm not any better or worse than writers who hope to make money--it's just how I am.

I recognise much of what you say, as I grew up poor too, and not a lot has changed. Youngsters today wouldn't believe that it's possible to live in a house where thick spears of ice coat the inside of window panes overnight in winter. The only source of heat in my family home in the 1950s and 60s was a small coal fire in the sitting room. This was used to dry washing, with clothing spread on clothes-horses during bad weather. The flames were great for making toast though, with a slice of bread held on the tines of an extendable metal toasting fork.

All of this is great practice for being an impoverished writer, of course...

Hang on, I'm starting to sound like the Four Yorkshiremen sketch by Monty Python, where they sit around talking about how poor they were as children.

 

[Meerkat]

Hehe, my husband can quote that bit by heart. We love Monty Python.

And I do have to say, that time in the Wisconsin woods was the happiest period of my life. I don't think I was even aware we were poor. I had a big forest to have adventures in and my imagination--what else did a six-year-old need?

 

[Marc Joan]

Hehe, my husband can quote that bit by heart. We love Monty Python.

And I do have to say, that time in the Wisconsin woods was the happiest period of my life. I don't think I was even aware we were poor. I had a big forest to have adventures in and my imagination--what else did a six-year-old need?

Totally agree. Nature is the best playground. I grew up in the sticks too.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Hehe, my husband can quote that bit by heart. We love Monty Python.

And I do have to say, that time in the Wisconsin woods was the happiest period of my life. I don't think I was even aware we were poor. I had a big forest to have adventures in and my imagination--what else did a six-year-old need?

As jailers have found through time immemorial, no one can control the thoughts of a person - they remain forever free in their imaginations. Any decent philosophy of life is based on this truth, for to quote Hamlet: 'there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'

I like what Isaac Bashevis Singer said about the imagination: 'When I was a little boy they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.'

 

[Katie-Ellen]

If a writer isn't a lover of reading, it shows in their writing, even in writing for children, or perhaps, especially in writing for children. The words may be simpler but economy of writing takes great skill. Reading is the apprenticeship, not just for the technicalities, but the traditions and for a whole lot of reference. It's fine to decide one wants to play with tradition, once one's done a training, but I think a lot of writers who only want to think about their books, and no-one else's much, are looking for short cuts, or in their enthusiasm, think they're ready to show their work before they truly are.

 

[Carol Rose]

If a writer isn't a lover of reading, it shows in their writing, even in writing for children, or perhaps, especially in writing for children. The words may be simpler but economy of writing takes great skill. Reading is the apprenticeship, not just for the technicalities, but the traditions and for a whole lot of reference. It's fine to decide one wants to play with tradition, once one's done a training, but I think a lot of writers who only want to think about their books, and no-one else's much, are looking for short cuts, or in their enthusiasm, think they're ready to show their work before they truly are.

I agree, Katie.

 

[Nicole Wilson]

If a writer isn't a lover of reading, it shows in their writing, even in writing for children, or perhaps, especially in writing for children. The words may be simpler but economy of writing takes great skill. Reading is the apprenticeship, not just for the technicalities, but the traditions and for a whole lot of reference. It's fine to decide one wants to play with tradition, once one's done a training, but I think a lot of writers who only want to think about their books, and no-one else's much, are looking for short cuts, or in their enthusiasm, think they're ready to show their work before they truly are.

I agree - I have a friend who is not a reader, but he is a writer, and I think it comes through in his writing. There are certain lessons I think you learn from reading other works. You really see what works and what doesn't.