You can also see me on Twitter and a few other places! Twitter would be a good place for you to follow because I'll sometimes stream myself working on things~
assuming you look for a trad deal that isn't a good idea - you are more likely to lose first rights by posting it on unfettered social media than in a password protected workshop environment. Course if you are planning on self publishing that doesn't matter
Sorry, I keep my social media presence to a minimum, so I don't read or send tweets. This forum is the bulk of my internet social activity, in fact.
Hmm Ok I'll have to consider maybe opening up a bit and posting here. I don't show all of it, I only stream it sometimes, or do short story stuff that isn't really related to like my big works. I am careful~
So, I have to disagree here on several points. Yes, there are a lot of writers who are extremely motivated, and will create wether or not they succeed. I hear that from a lot of successful people, and not just writers. But just because many have followed that path to success doesn't mean that it is the only path to success. There are successful writers who do not have that degree of motivation. No one should quit just because they don't feel a powerful creative drive. Studies of successful people across fields tells us that success is strongly correlated with practice. Advising someone to write less quantity and more quality is counter-productive, because it tells them to worry over single sentences rather than practicing their craft and actually getting better. Each word that a writer produces is a step towards them becoming a better writer. Write more. However a writer wants to do that, be it schedules, deadlines, or unpredictable spurts of creativity, is up to them. There are many paths to success, but all writers succeed through practice and study.
OFF TOPIC The Aspie in my nick means Asperger. I'm diagnosed Asperger person. (Also some ADHD features.) About 70% of Aspies are also ADHD. But usually there is no need to do separate diagnose for that. Autism goes wider and deeper. So it becomes the main diagnose. Most autistic persons have problem with executing things that stress them or are connected to stressful things, situations or persons. So that is not only ADHD trait. There are some useful methods to deal with executive problems. Some of them were developed in Finland (1999-2001 &) 2002-2005. Those methods have not been globally well known. Some a bit similar methods start to be. There has been a lot of reinventing and renaming those methods and tools - which is good. Finnish autistic autism activist Heta Pukki is not the inventor or developer of those methods*, but she has had very important role in transforming some part of that kind of knowledge to international awareness. She is very bright and well connected. The main point in those methods was to rethink structuring in a new & wider way - not from the direction of agendas and timetables or scientific paradigms but from the direction of autistic cognitive and emotional structures. (You can compare that to the fact that blind people have participated to developing things helping them for decades. Or that wheelchair people can have they saying in how to make environments unobstructed.) Handling connections between stress and executive needs & deeds was also part of those methods. (I have used part of those stress handling methods to keep me going in a very stressful life situation after 29.10.2018. It has worked really well.) There is very, very, very shallow possibility that some of that old knowledge about handling executive problems will be widely available some day. There are also very much methods to handle autistic identity work and some methods to deal with social life. That part of that old developmental work has not been published in written form. Social life part is mainly but not totally outdated. Identity work part... It's not outdated. I will respect the will of that original developer and not tell anything more here. *Heta has participated in developing some other stuff.
Welcome to life. Either you hit the lottery or you find the energy to write in spite of having to have a job or two to pay the bills. There are millions of unfinished manuscripts in the bottom drawer of desks in millions of homes. As to writing for a living you need to step back and be realistic about the chances. This is a very very long tailed phenomenon with way too many writers wanting to make a living and way too few people wanting to buy their books. Add in that digital has disrupted everything so that people with no ability are now authors who are published on some ebook site like aamazing or whatever. The truth is that a small handful of folks will make an awful lot of money. Some people may break even. Most writers will never recover their expenses and certainly wont make minimum wage for their time. If you are still living at home then stay there and use the rent you do not pay to build up your savings or to pay for school so you can get a higher paying job in the future.
Well...writing doesn't really involve that much in the way of expenses. I agree that most won't make minimum wage on their writing hours.
I guess it depends what you call expenses and how serious you were with your writing. If you do not edit, and 'publish' for free on some aamazing ebook site, then you may not have any expenses. If you were serious and hired an editor, then you have some significant expenses compared to what most writers make from their sales. More so if you self published in print form and also hired a cover artist, layout guru, and other technical help to get the book manufactured. Plus advertising and promotion, delivery, storage, tax records, yada yada if you seriously tried to sell your print book.
You seem to be assuming that writing leads to self publishing. Traditional publishing involves none of those expenses.
Your observation is of course correct. But I did not intend to include that case with my comment. My bad perhaps, but I avoid caveats and all the weasel words needed to make a post fit absolutely 100.00000% of the writers I mentioned. So not really assuming anything. Most writers will never get to be traditionally published. And those that are will definitely have editing and other expenses to get to the point where they could sell an mss to a real publisher. Advances are getting smaller. Some publishers offer zero unless you specifically ask for it and negotiate it. From what I observe, there are millions of self published 'authors' but not that many new ones trad pubbed. So for me my post was accurate enough even if you wish to quibble with it.
There is some dangerous misinformation in this, specifically in the "those that are will definitely have editing and other expenses to get to the point where they could sell an mss to a real publisher". Until very recently, it was considered an absolute mistake for an author to pay for editing or anything else before submitting to a publisher. More recently, some people are having good results from paying for editing, but it's still very, very far from mandatory. If you refuse to use "weasel words" to make your statements more accurate, maybe you could at least avoid the absolutes that make your statements completely inaccurate.
That and I literally said in my first post that I don't want to hear the "Getting a career like that is really hard and near impossible."speech but for some reason in forums like this, there's always ONE person that feels the need to bring that up no matter what.
That is definitely not the advice that I've seen--seen for many years. If a writer seeking traditional publishing is not prepared to self-edit their fiction, that writer is indeed likely to take a loss on their fiction, because the cost of an editor is likely to be less than they'll get paid by a publisher. And for that reason, a writer should become able to self-edit their fiction. That's a large part of the skill development. That's part of the writer taking their writing seriously. The idea that an author will likely spend far more than they will earn is usually accurate for self published authors. It is not accurate for traditionally published authors. The idea that you're not guaranteed to be published if you go for traditional publishing is of course true. It's always been true. But these days, making the attempt doesn't even involve carbon paper and postage. With self publishing, an author will put in a lot of effort and money for a small number of readers and payment. With traditional publishing, an author will put in a lot of effort and generally no money for a chance at a larger number of readers and a larger payment. Your post completely disregards traditional publishing, the publishing medium that is the only one that I'm interested in, and the only one that many authors are interested in.
These days it is hard to find a publisher that will edit your work if you are not famous already. Most writers that I know do spend money to have their work edited so they can get it accepted. Many publishers have pushed the up front work out to agents who are expected to give them finished mss that do not need much editing at all. Whether you or your agent does it depends on the agent but many writers have to get their work edited to get an agent to accept it.
Guilty as charged. My first post omitted a very small special case that will not apply to 99+% of the folks on this forum. Trying to weasel word every post to cover 100% of everything would make them to long and cumbersome for anyone to read. I was a professional writer and do have some knowledge of how things work. I am comfortable with what I said even if you can find counterexamples showing it is not absolute.
It's hard to find a publisher who will accept your work, but every publisher I've ever worked with (and there have been a lot) has paid for multiple rounds of edits after acceptance. My agent certainly provides me with editorial suggestions, but this is to make my work more likely to sell, not because my subsequent publishers will not be doing any editing. Again, some authors have apparently found agents/publishers after paying to have their work edited. But I wouldn't go as far as "many". I feel like you may be repeating a lot of the bitching that goes on about publishers (especially in pro-self-publishing circles), but I don't see any reflection of these complaints in my own experiences. What have you seen in your experiences?
I did not see that in your OP. Sorry if you do not want to hear the facts such as they are. I would bet that I am probably 3x as old as you are and have a lot more real world experience. I was a professional writer as well as a small publisher. I wanted to self publish but never had the time to finish my book but did help others get theirs produced. So dismiss me as an OF if you want, but get your book written. Then you can come back and tell us how you got to be rich and famous in spite of the naysayers.
Time is money. That aside, if you are serious you would pay for an editor. No writer is competent to self edit as well as fresh eyes by a professional editor can do it. And there are many other expenses if you are serious. Promotion of the book as well as self promotion. And many others unless you are one of the very few who gets trad pubbed.
You're assuming that 99% of the people on this forum have zero interest in traditional publishing? That this is a forum totally about self publishing? No.
If your comments are always and exclusively about self publishing, then you could just add that disclaimer, and people would stop correcting you.
