I'm proud to call myself a writer, though it took myself a good, long time to reach that point. Commercial success has escaped me thus far, but I've finally come to realize that my gift just happens to be something that in most cases doesn't translate to financial independence. For a long, long time I defined success as being able to make a living. Ergo, I was a failure as a writer. I've learned that such a definition provides a damned poor yardstick for measuring "success."
The thing is that I KNOW I'm a good writer. It's the one thing in my life I'm absolutely confident about. I can write like I breathe; it's always come naturally. I don't know why or how, but it always has. I didn't do much with that gift until my mid-30s. My first published piece was in Albanian when I was living and working in Kosovo. It was translated from English, so for all I know it might have read like the Communist Manifesto. Even so, I was a published author...and I felt like a teenage girl who'd lost her virginity for the right reasons.
I've dreamed of writing a book. Did that. I sold a couple hundred copies because my dream was to write and publish a book. The marketing part of things? Pffft.... I WAS AN AUTHOR, DAMNIT!!!!
I had my own blog for 20 years before I started another one on Substack. I'm working on another book. I suspect I'll write until they pry my laptop from my cold, dead fingers...and I'll probably be every bit as anonymous as I am now. I work hard and I have the talent. The luck? Who knows? Much of that is out of my control...and I suck at self-promotion. Most introverts do...and I put the "i" in "introvert."
I'm thankful to have you in my corner, though. There's at least one person who understand the struggle and the frustration...and the joys.
Things could be worse. I could be a bricklayer. :-)
I'm not a 'writer', though I've kept a journal for long periods in my life. I know next to nothing about publishing and things related.
The way I choose what I read and buy for myself and as gifts for others is by field of interest, title and cover of the book and the short discription of its content.
Even though I consider myself a decent judge and lover of good artwork, in case I wanted to publicize anything I wrote or might write in the future, I'd collaborate with a professional (someone who's had a reputable education in visual arts) who I admire and trust to give me advise or create the cover for me. The title has to pique my interest through either its mystique or the little something that sets it apart. Another way the title catches my attention is the way it is presented.
The typeface and font, whether it's plain or embossed its size and how well it is integrated with, yet remains outstanding on, the artwork.
The name of the author should not be overbearing, if anything I'd like to 'discover' it and go, 'ah, I know/have heard of her/him.
The reason for my thinking is that until I'm a household name, most people buying my work will at first judge it by its cover.
I'm a sci-fi fan from since I was around twelve and a lover of a great short story. I enjoy a good book doubly so if it has a decent cover.
Randy and I had been working with Columbia University Press for a year as we were finishing up "The Quantum of Explanation"_*_, when out of the blue they told us they were no longer publishing that kind of stuff. Randy (who is the senior academic & has all the connections) shopped it around until we finally got a nibble at Taylor/Francis (ie, Routledge). But they had this rule where they wouldn't publish anything over 140,000 words, and QoE was 210,000. That's some brutal editing.
But Randy talked them into sending the MS as it was out to be reviewed. Those reviews were so overwhelmingly positive that Routledge gave us another 40,000 words. I think our final count was something like 172,000. And honestly, it was a better work for our pruning. (It is considered one of the most important contributions to Whitehead scholarship of the last 30 years.)
Per "women's" fiction vs. fiction: Samuel R. Delany wrote at length on the arbitrariness and vicious misrepresentation inherent in much of what gets dismissed as "genre" writing. Science Fiction and Fantasy ("SF&F") deals in modalities (structures of possibility, if you will) far beyond that which qualifies as "real" fiction, making that "real" fiction a logical subset of SF&F. Yet it is the "mainstream" stuff that is published as legit. Meanwhile, SF&F authors sell at a scale that puts to shame 99% of the bestsellers on the NYT lists, while still barely making more than pocket change. Joanna Russ, one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th C., never made more than $4,000.00 on anything she published.
I'm closing in on a finished draft of a fantasy piece I've been working on for over 2 years now. I've learned a lot about my craft this time around, and a technique for breaking things out into 1st & 2nd drafts, with a minimum of three full passes through each draft, that will turn this finished product into a pretty readable story. By virtue of my "genre", there are fairly big name publishers who will accept cold submissions, so that will be my first approach prior to the tears and recriminations of finding an agent. I hope I live long enough.
(By the way, the title that came up on my screen was "A Writer's Live is a Snow Globe Filled With ... " My first thought was to fill in that ellipsis with " ... Flakes of Disappointment and Disregard."
_*_ That part of the book's title was all my doing. I was tasked with writing the 4th chapter cold, from the ground up. (Many of the chapters were based upon articles or conference presentations we'd already written. But each of us had some stuff we had to compose from the first letter to the last punctuation mark, and chapter 4 was one of mine.) I was almost in tears trying to come up with a title for the chapter (and hence, a central idea), when I took a break and streamed a Daniel Craig, 007 movie that I'd seen before. As you may have guessed from that less than subtle lead in, it was "The Quantum of Solace." So at our next meeting, I very excitedly told him that I had the title for the chapter. I stared at me wide-eyed after I told him and said, "You just named the book." I stared back at him and said, "No I didn't." (No way I wanted that responsibility.) Anyway, we went back and forth a few times and obviously a relented. So the title of chapter 4 is also the title of the book.
I'm proud to call myself a writer, though it took myself a good, long time to reach that point. Commercial success has escaped me thus far, but I've finally come to realize that my gift just happens to be something that in most cases doesn't translate to financial independence. For a long, long time I defined success as being able to make a living. Ergo, I was a failure as a writer. I've learned that such a definition provides a damned poor yardstick for measuring "success."
The thing is that I KNOW I'm a good writer. It's the one thing in my life I'm absolutely confident about. I can write like I breathe; it's always come naturally. I don't know why or how, but it always has. I didn't do much with that gift until my mid-30s. My first published piece was in Albanian when I was living and working in Kosovo. It was translated from English, so for all I know it might have read like the Communist Manifesto. Even so, I was a published author...and I felt like a teenage girl who'd lost her virginity for the right reasons.
I've dreamed of writing a book. Did that. I sold a couple hundred copies because my dream was to write and publish a book. The marketing part of things? Pffft.... I WAS AN AUTHOR, DAMNIT!!!!
I had my own blog for 20 years before I started another one on Substack. I'm working on another book. I suspect I'll write until they pry my laptop from my cold, dead fingers...and I'll probably be every bit as anonymous as I am now. I work hard and I have the talent. The luck? Who knows? Much of that is out of my control...and I suck at self-promotion. Most introverts do...and I put the "i" in "introvert."
I'm thankful to have you in my corner, though. There's at least one person who understand the struggle and the frustration...and the joys.
Things could be worse. I could be a bricklayer. :-)
I'm not a 'writer', though I've kept a journal for long periods in my life. I know next to nothing about publishing and things related.
The way I choose what I read and buy for myself and as gifts for others is by field of interest, title and cover of the book and the short discription of its content.
Even though I consider myself a decent judge and lover of good artwork, in case I wanted to publicize anything I wrote or might write in the future, I'd collaborate with a professional (someone who's had a reputable education in visual arts) who I admire and trust to give me advise or create the cover for me. The title has to pique my interest through either its mystique or the little something that sets it apart. Another way the title catches my attention is the way it is presented.
The typeface and font, whether it's plain or embossed its size and how well it is integrated with, yet remains outstanding on, the artwork.
The name of the author should not be overbearing, if anything I'd like to 'discover' it and go, 'ah, I know/have heard of her/him.
The reason for my thinking is that until I'm a household name, most people buying my work will at first judge it by its cover.
I'm a sci-fi fan from since I was around twelve and a lover of a great short story. I enjoy a good book doubly so if it has a decent cover.
Randy and I had been working with Columbia University Press for a year as we were finishing up "The Quantum of Explanation"_*_, when out of the blue they told us they were no longer publishing that kind of stuff. Randy (who is the senior academic & has all the connections) shopped it around until we finally got a nibble at Taylor/Francis (ie, Routledge). But they had this rule where they wouldn't publish anything over 140,000 words, and QoE was 210,000. That's some brutal editing.
But Randy talked them into sending the MS as it was out to be reviewed. Those reviews were so overwhelmingly positive that Routledge gave us another 40,000 words. I think our final count was something like 172,000. And honestly, it was a better work for our pruning. (It is considered one of the most important contributions to Whitehead scholarship of the last 30 years.)
Per "women's" fiction vs. fiction: Samuel R. Delany wrote at length on the arbitrariness and vicious misrepresentation inherent in much of what gets dismissed as "genre" writing. Science Fiction and Fantasy ("SF&F") deals in modalities (structures of possibility, if you will) far beyond that which qualifies as "real" fiction, making that "real" fiction a logical subset of SF&F. Yet it is the "mainstream" stuff that is published as legit. Meanwhile, SF&F authors sell at a scale that puts to shame 99% of the bestsellers on the NYT lists, while still barely making more than pocket change. Joanna Russ, one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th C., never made more than $4,000.00 on anything she published.
I'm closing in on a finished draft of a fantasy piece I've been working on for over 2 years now. I've learned a lot about my craft this time around, and a technique for breaking things out into 1st & 2nd drafts, with a minimum of three full passes through each draft, that will turn this finished product into a pretty readable story. By virtue of my "genre", there are fairly big name publishers who will accept cold submissions, so that will be my first approach prior to the tears and recriminations of finding an agent. I hope I live long enough.
(By the way, the title that came up on my screen was "A Writer's Live is a Snow Globe Filled With ... " My first thought was to fill in that ellipsis with " ... Flakes of Disappointment and Disregard."
_*_ That part of the book's title was all my doing. I was tasked with writing the 4th chapter cold, from the ground up. (Many of the chapters were based upon articles or conference presentations we'd already written. But each of us had some stuff we had to compose from the first letter to the last punctuation mark, and chapter 4 was one of mine.) I was almost in tears trying to come up with a title for the chapter (and hence, a central idea), when I took a break and streamed a Daniel Craig, 007 movie that I'd seen before. As you may have guessed from that less than subtle lead in, it was "The Quantum of Solace." So at our next meeting, I very excitedly told him that I had the title for the chapter. I stared at me wide-eyed after I told him and said, "You just named the book." I stared back at him and said, "No I didn't." (No way I wanted that responsibility.) Anyway, we went back and forth a few times and obviously a relented. So the title of chapter 4 is also the title of the book.