So. Are You A Writer Or Not? (meaning, money, quote)

[cpg35223]

Okay. This is a thread that is not about snobbery. It's not a thread that's trying to divide working writers from the wannabes. However, it is a kick in the pants, a bit of tough love if you will.

I am a writer. A freelance writer. Mostly advertising (Which can be highly creative, thanks. I don't write car dealer ads where the guy threatens to eat a live bug on television). I also write a lot of magazine articles. I have had one novel published several years ago (Which I refuse to lay claim to. It's a really crappy book and I have the honesty to admit it), another agented one bouncing around a publisher's office, and a third in the works. I earn my living with words, and make excellent money doing so.

Yet I recently returned from a writers conference that was absolutely swarming with people who claimed to be writers, but had never written anything beyond a note to their son's elementary school teacher. If you've ever been to a writer's conference, you know the type. They pepper the speakers with inane questions such as 'Where do you get your story ideas?' or--even worse--'How much money do you make off your novels?' Trust me, the 20% of people who are actually writers at those conferences roll their eyes at those questions.

Hey, we all started somewhere. We were all newbies at one time or another. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. And those of us who actually write for a living, no matter what form it takes, understand how hard it is to get started. So if you've managed to get a couple of things sold, even if it's the shortest article in the history of mankind, even if it's a joke you sold to Reader's Digest for $25, then you're a colleague.

What concerns me here are the perpetual newbies. The ones who are in love with the idea of being writers, but won't get off their butts to actually be writers. The aforementioned writers conference, a modest affair, has the same people year after year asking the same questions, but those people never seem to be moving forward on their craft.

In the interesting of HELPING, let me offer some hard questions to ask yourself.

Have you written more than a handful of notes in the past year?

If you actually have something underway, has it progressed at all in the past year, or is the file just sitting on your word processor?

Have you actually submitted something, anything in the past year? By that I don't mean a novel manuscript, but anything, even an article for the local interest magazine.

If you are attending writer's conferences, are you submitting anything to be critiqued? Or are you just content to sit in lectures listening to writers talk about how great it is to be a writer?

Do you have other people read your stuff? By that, I'm not talking about your spouse, your mother, or your best friend, but rather other writers who will tell you their honest opinions.

Do you have umpteen different books on writing on your shelf? Typically speaking, the first book you read on the subject is a revelation. The second one will usually fill in the gaps that the first one did not cover. But after the third or fourth book, you're stalling.

Did you buy The Writers Market before you had anything to sell?


If you're answering YES to any of these things, here's what I would gently offer to help you out.

-- Write. Every. Day. Even if you're just scribbling random thoughts in a journal. Turn off the idiot box. Get up thirty minutes early. Whatever it takes. But a writer doesn't just think about writing. He writes. Spend thirty minutes a day writing, and you'll be amazed at the sheer volume of stuff you generate over the course of a year.

-- Write for the love of it, not the money. I read somewhere that there are 200 writers in the United States who actually live off their books. That means that, the day after your 20 copies from the publisher arrive on your doorstep, you will probably go back to your job at the bank or the Social Security Administration. But that's okay, because you're in this to have your stuff read, right?

-- If you're going every year to a writer's conference and attending the same seminars every year, then you're in a rut. Change your emphasis from podium-centered conferences to critique-based conferences.

-- Network. Talk to other aspiring writers. Take a more established writer to lunch. Learn what they did.

-- Join a critique group. After you've really polished your writing, put it in front of people who are excellent editors. Yes, it's painful. But so is the aftermath of your first session with a trainer, too.

-- Hit up publications for small writing assignments. Articles. Whatever. Anything to get your writing chops (And a by-line). Trust me. When you couple of pubs start using you, it gets a lot easier to sell yourself to others.


I hope I didn't touch any nerves with this thread. All I'm trying to do is level with you in hopes that you'll move forward and fulfill your most cherished aspiration of seeing your name in print and having total strangers react to it in a positive fashion. Hope this helps.

[LittleDolphin]

Right on! Or should I say, Write On?

What you said is absolutely true.

[P.K. Lecoq]

This is great advice and I have just now promised myself that I will spend at least 30 minutes writing or attempting to write every day. I have just finished a book for teen readers that is print ready at Amazon, my first book, which was two years in the making. I want to write a sequel, but haven't been able to get going. Today, I will.

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

What concerns me here are the perpetual newbies. The ones who are in love with the idea of being writers, but won't get off their butts to actually be writers. The aforementioned writers conference, a modest affair, has the same people year after year asking the same questions, but those people never seem to be moving forward on their craft.

One of the main reasons I don't go to writers' conferences is that I don't want to attend a gathering based largely on a mass illusion one dare not puncture. I'm not deeply enamored with the fact that I'm a freelance writer who keeps getting paid to do it. I don't even much like it when people ask what I do, because they attach way too much to it. (You too have seen what passes for published writing today, so you know why I'm not impressed with myself over it.)

It really wasn't all that meritorious an achievement. I got started writing glorified advertising copy disguised as something else. It doesn't pay as well as mining zinc, but it's easier on my back and a lot more fun, so I keep doing it. The less people who know I'm a writer, the less people will ask me to read their kid's high school paper or their sonnets or their master's thesis on biochemistry, then ignore everything I tell them.

For me it all came into clarity the first time a publisher sent me a contract. At that point I knew this show was on the air for true.

[Peggy Anne]

I'm too busy writing to worry about it. I have written over 2 thousand poems, and I had the best captive audience on Earth : A herd of cows. You should have see the looks on their faces.

I am not concerned about attaching dollar bills to my creativity. Are we still considered writers if we write a short novel, never publish it, but we tape record it, and give away copies to people we like ? What if they give us a love $ offering ? Are we considered professionals ?

I don't care if I never become a talking head on a tv or radio show. It doesn't matter to me if I have a stack of books surrounding me like a fortress. What matters to me is that I get pleasure from writing, and that other living creatures enjoy what I do. No amount of money can replace the joy of creation. Money just buys mayonnaise, and stuff. But, that's coming from a 62 year old desert dweller. Now, where did I put that pen ?

[cpg35223]

Originally Posted by Peggy Anne

I'm too busy writing to worry about it. I have written over 2 thousand poems, and I had the best captive audience on Earth : A herd of cows. You should have see the looks on their faces.

I am not concerned about attaching dollar bills to my creativity. Are we still considered writers if we write a short novel, never publish it, but we tape record it, and give away copies to people we like ? What if they give us a love $ offering ? Are we considered professionals ?

I don't care if I never become a talking head on a tv or radio show. It doesn't matter to me if I have a stack of books surrounding me like a fortress. What matters to me is that I get pleasure from writing, and that other living creatures enjoy what I do. No amount of money can replace the joy of creation. Money just buys mayonnaise, and stuff. But, that's coming from a 62 year old desert dweller. Now, where did I put that pen ?

See, I'm not even talking about the commercial viability of writing for a living, for anybody who writes magazine pieces for $150 or $200 a pop knows that they're not doing it for the money. In fact I was pretty explicit on that point in my OP, if you had read it carefully.

Nope. Instead I would argue that one has not completed one's journey as a writer until one's work is read and reacted to by an audience of people who otherwise have no connection to its author.

That's because writing is communication, and the act of communication must have two participants--one who delivers a message and another who receives it.

[WordWarrior]

Yes. I am a writer.

[jc76]

I write for myself. I don't write to be critiqued. I don't write for fortune or fame. I don't plan on ever trying to make a living writing. I would never ask Stephen King where he gets his ideas. I could care less where any writer gets his/her ideas because I understand that the human mind being put onto paper has no such playground or factory where the ideas are processed.
I would never go around telling people I write, I am not a writer, I simply love to write. There is a difference. I don't know, nor care to know all the terms and mumbo jumbo involved with being a writer today. I just let it flow and whatever comes out comes out.

[Niftybergin]

I don't consider myself to be a writer, but I enjoy writing. Sometimes I even think I'm somewhat good at it. Mostly, though, I just enjoy words and stringing them together. I like the rhythm and flow of those strung-together words. I like the pretty pictures they can paint, the emotions they can convey.

I don't consider myself to be a writer because I think I lack a basic attribute of writers: creativity. I am simply not a creative person; I don't really originate ideas.

I will never stop writing, but I don't think I'll ever be A Writer.

[coyoteskye]

I don't judge anyone's creative process and i don't judge their aspirations either.
The majority of published material is mediocre at best and being published is meaningless to me and is not necessarily indicative of the value or quality of the work.
The egos (including yours) who roll their eyes at the silly questions asked by the housewife from the mid-west at a writers conference would be more annoying to me than she is to you.
That's my gentle tough love for you.