What happens if you don't become a bestseller?

Discussion in 'Discussion of Published Works' started by PensiveQuill, Aug 25, 2014.

  1. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    Nothing wrong with writing for money or fame. May not be a lot of money or huge fame, but it's as good a reason as "loving to do it", and certainly doesn't mean your heart isn't in it. If I weren't interested in gaining some financial reward, I'd just post my stuff for free on the internet.

    I do wish we could rid of this idea that these things are mutually exclusive...
     
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  2. LeighAnn

    LeighAnn Member

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    I really get my back up when someone says "if you're writing for money, you should just stop writing." I write for money (and I make a decent living doing so), and I love doing it. True, I have to make sure the majority of my work is commercial enough to sell (or the poor kids would starve), but that doesn't mean I don't thoroughly love what I'm writing. My heart is firmly invested in every word that hits the page; writing for money doesn't change that.
     
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  3. Sheriff Woody

    Sheriff Woody Active Member

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    Loving to write and making a little extra cash on the side as a bonus is quite different from money being the reason for writing.

    Do what you love to do, because you are likely to be better at that than anything else you try. Because your heart and soul and emotions are in it. Not so if you're just looking to please others or pay bills. You must please yourself above all others. Everything after that (fame, money) is merely a bonus.

    If writing is not something you love more than money or fame, then you should stop writing and find what you do love. Then - and only then - will your life be enriched in ways you never imagined.
     
  4. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    Let me put it a different way - a great number of people do things for money (job, career) that they don't "love" but are very good at. No reason why writing should be any different. People need to get away from this idea that writing is some kind of "speshul" thing that is demeaned by money. It isn't.
     
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  5. daemon

    daemon Contributor Contributor

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    Actually, yes, there is. But not the reason you refer to in your post.

    It is the same as with any fine art. Your level of caring about stacking boxes does not affect how well you stack boxes. You can hate that task, but you can do it for the money, and all it takes is an able body and knowledge of how to stack boxes.

    Someone who writes fiction for love writes differently from someone who writes only for money. Even someone who writes only for money needs to pretend that he is putting his heart into it; otherwise, his fiction would read like a police report and that would stunt its sales.

    It is pretty easy to conclude that if someone who does not care about something needs pretend that he cares in order to get what he wants, then someone who does care has a clear advantage. That is not a dichotomy, but a sliding scale: the more you care, the greater your advantage. The less you care, the more you should consider doing something you care about, or at least something where you are on an even playing field with people who care.
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2014
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  6. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    They may write differently - that doesn't mean they write better. This idea that those with a "passion" for writing are somehow better writers than those with a more practical view is a myth. Nor does not having a "passion" for writing mean one doesn't care about it. It's not black and white, one extreme or the other.
     
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  7. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    How do you know? Lol
     
  8. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    I used to beta. Believe me - I know! :D
     
  9. Sheriff Woody

    Sheriff Woody Active Member

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    Yeah, and that's the reason most movies suck. Because their development is dictated by money and not by putting forth the best product possible. I know this from first-hand experience.

    If you are more concerned with your paycheck than the quality of your work, you should not be in that field. Period. It really is that simple.
     
  10. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    Again, this insistence that doing something for money means doing it less well! Good grief. Shall I assume that all of your writing will be offered for free, so your art is never tainted by a few gold coins?
     
  11. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    The number of authors who created great works for cash is inexhaustible. Poe wanted nothing more than to be the first American to make a living from writing fiction. Shakespeare is the prime example. Even something like the great and under-appreciated novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written explicitly for cash. It was sold as a 'shilling shocker', horror stories for Christmas; a tradition sadly now lost to us.

    Dickens too, wrote exclusively for money. He got his start as a reporter to the house of commons, and made his name printing his novels in by-monthly periodicals and then as full novels once the story was finished. Why would he do this if it wasn't for pure financial gain, and maybe giving himself a little more time?

    M.R. James told his ghost stories to friends, and wrote them down as a hobby - but he still published them, and I'll imagine he didn't mind the few pounds extra he got from sales, even though he never made a living from writing fiction. He had a day job as a professor and antiquarian, both jobs that require writing academic papers as the primary way of valuing his worth and income.

    Robert Frost was a school teacher and failed farmer whose writing seems to have literally saved his life. Because he didn't show a great passion for teaching. And I can't quote it from memory, there is a letter where he admits he wants to be enjoyed by the common reader and literati, purely for financial gain.

    Few people will make much money from writing, especially writing fiction. But just because you shouldn't really expect a good return profit doesn't mean people do not write for a return profit. Also, not expecting money for your writing is far from a reason not to try, because others have done it before you.


    Honestly it would be harder to name writers who do not write for money. I was going to say Pope, but his fortune was made translating Homer. Byron, but he made obscene amounts for each canto of Don Juan. Virgil didn't seem to need the cash because he was Octavian's favorite poet, but we do not know a lot about his life either. The only people I could name with any honesty are the Greek playwrights, but they wrote plays to be judged during ritual festivities dedicated to Dionysus, which also fits into the Ancient Greek love of competition and excelling in all aspects - money didn't seem to exist then as we understand it today.
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2014
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  12. daemon

    daemon Contributor Contributor

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    Yes.
     
  13. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    And that's your choice. But giving it away still doesn't put any writer a step above another on the quality ladder. For some writers (not saying you because I haven't read any of your stuff), giving it away is the only way anybody would read it.
     
  14. Sheriff Woody

    Sheriff Woody Active Member

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    You must stop confusing the reason for writing with any of the byproducts of writing.

    If you are doing something for money and not because it's the one thing in life you love more than money, then yes, your work will suffer. It's like being paid to care about someone else's child more than your own. Good luck with that.
     
  15. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Then what about Dr. Jykell? Or pretty much Robert Frost's life work?
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2014
  16. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

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    I think there is a bit of hair splitting with the idea of money. Especially it being a compromise. There's some artists in my family. One is a painter and it takes him an entire month to complete a painting - he's figured the cost and has managed to sell each painting for a certain sum in order to keep an income for his family. He also sells prints, and does abstracts - he can do a dozen a week and get paid more for those sometimes. Does this affect his art? Does he care? Last I heard he loved what he was doing and excited about each project. Some might say well, he's no Picasso therefore he's not an artist. I think that's the trouble. You have to see whether there is first a compromise in the writer before it can be decided that they're corrupted by money. How can one tell?

    People can only for sure tell about themselves, everyone else is a guess. Occasionally the guess is pretty easy.

    I've been on writing sites for two years and before that I corresponded with a lot of self published writers. Some talked mighty big about passion but when the bucks didn't roll in after their first self published book, they backed off writing like a failed hobby.

    Wanting to be a successful writer doesn't necessarily compromise you're writing - only if you let it.
     
  17. Sheriff Woody

    Sheriff Woody Active Member

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    Having the reward come after the completion of a task instead of the reward being the task itself is one way of letting it.

    Nobody can fool themselves into caring about something more than they do. If your heart is not truly in the work, the work will reflect that.

    Watch any sport and you can tell the athletes who train the hardest because they love the sport from those who only do good enough to get paid. You can't hide that. It's reflected in their work.
     
  18. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    If that was true then it would be reflected the list of great books, and names like Shakespeare and Dickens and Ovid would not be anywhere among them.
     
  19. Sheriff Woody

    Sheriff Woody Active Member

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    How could you possibly know this?
     
  20. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Because I've studied them. And going off your theory that want of money adversely affects quality then their names would be mere footnotes to writers like Sophocles and Aeschylus (who I think wrote for the praise) and Dante (who wrote in part to piss people off). They wrote for the cash.

    Shakespeare didn't even bother to have his plays published. We don't know the exact reason, but paying for the expense of something like the first folio (which at the time cost £10, the equivalent of £300 today) would have taken money away from his company, and thus from his wallet. His plays were not formally published, but they were being performed and were bringing the money in with a rake. It's thought Hamlet is so long (three hours) to give enough time to sell more beer and pies. His collection of sonnets first seemed to sell poorly but eventually became a sensation. We even have figures showing how many copies were sold - this is something that his near contemporaries like John Donne or Christopher Marlowe did not do; little books were cheaper to produce.

    Ovid made his money from writing poetry, despite the fact he was noted as a talented rhetorician. He could have been anything, and been successful in cultured Roman life, and he decided to be a poet like his friend Virgil. Virgil didn't need the money I don't think (we don't know that much about him) but records show he was painfully shy, and Virgil was Emperor Octavian's favourite poet. Virgil didn't seem to be in it for the money, but Ovid was it seems.

    As I said above Dickens wrote exclusively for money. He got his start as a reporter to the house of commons, and made his name printing his novels in by-monthly periodicals and then as full novels once the story was finished. Why would he do this if it wasn't for pure financial gain, and maybe giving himself a little more time?

    Robert Frost too, in fact here's the quote I mentioned earlier:

    (Frost to John Bartlett, November 1913)

    He also said in an interview with Paris Review (I think) where he said something like a poet should not include anything in a poem that the common reader could not understand. In short, he was catering to both, to bring home the bacon. As I said before, Frost was a school teacher and a failed farmer. He could have made a living as a school teacher, but I don't get the impression reading his letters that his heart was really in teaching. I honestly think if he stayed a school teacher it would have destroyed his soul. He loved poetry, and wanted to be paid for it. Thankfully he was. Actually, nearly the exact same could be said of John Keats who was an apothecary.

    I have no doubt that all of those writers did not also write with relish - that they really enjoyed the act. But to say their writing were not in a major way financially motivated would be a naive fantasy. To say their want of money adversely affected their writing is a statement that cannot be supported by the facts.
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2014
  21. Sheriff Woody

    Sheriff Woody Active Member

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    Fair enough, but most of that is speculation. It's impossible to distinguish what an artist says from what an artist truly means. Ask an artist what the meaning of a piece is or why a certain decision was made and you will most likely be lied to. That's one of the principal reasons for creating art in the first place - to communicate a message without saying it aloud and explicitly.

    Nevertheless, we're getting a bit off-topic. But I stand by my axiom that true love for a project will produce more genuine results than a pot of goal at the end of the rainbow, regardless of how large that pot is. Whatever it is that you love doing more than anything - more than money - you are likely to be better at that than anything else.

    If you want to make money, there are plenty of easier ways to do that than writing. But just because someone enjoys writing more than flipping burgers at McDonalds doesn't mean they love writing.
     
  22. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    But people need to eat. And live under a roof. Does someone who works forty hours at a non-writing job, and then goes home to write for twenty hours, love writing more than someone who writes for sixty hours and gets paid enough to eat and have shelter?
     
  23. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    What an artist like Frost says about a poem he has wrote is next to meaningless, and really the artist is the last person you should trust to interpret their own work, because as I think Oscar Wilde said 'My greatest fear is being understood'. What Frost says about his reason for writing in a specific style is very meaningful, because he is talking about his general attitude toward his creations, and to the art as a genre.

    It's hardly been a secret that there is a slim chance of making a living from writing, these days even making money from writing. However, people have done it in the past, there is a change they will do it in the future. It's better to try for both artistic integrity and financial reward. The names above have done just that I would argue. An assertion that being motivated for purely artistic means creates better art I would argue doesn't stand up to scrutiny beyond the oral tradition.
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2014
  24. RLJ

    RLJ Member

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    I write because I enjoy it. Getting published is an eventual goal and I will feel accomplished if I get that far. I'm not striving for a bestseller. It would, of course, be a pleasant surprise--but it's not my end goal.

    Write because you like it--not because you yearn for the success. It may or may not happen but it shouldn't be your motivation.
     
  25. Sheriff Woody

    Sheriff Woody Active Member

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    It is possible to turn your most loved activity into your career. That should be everyone's goal - make a living doing what you love. There is no better way to enrich your life. But do not put the cart before the horse.
     

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