Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Open Thread
Hello, out there. Anybody home? Anyone have any writing questions they'd like one of us to take a swing at? Any observations or comments? I've got a couple of things waiting in the wings but no time to write them today, and so I thought I'd hang this up here for the moment and see if it collected any interest.
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8 comments:
Hi,
Long time lurker, first time poster.
Here is my question. When did you feel comfortable calling yourself a writer to others?
Hi Michael, that's a great question and I suspect you'll get very different answers from different Wyrdsmiths.
In my case, it was around the time I finished my first book (currently residing on a shelf in my basement) in 1991 or thereabouts and about 8 years before my first story sale. I can pin it down pretty well because the mother of a good friend of mine likes to tell the story of how I self-identified as a writer from the moment she first met me. She uses it as an illustration of persistence and how much pleasure it's given her to watch my career blossom.
I think I started self-identifying as an author when I sold my first novel.
Hi Michael--thanks for posting! Good question, and one with as many answers, I suspect, as there are people to answer.
I'd have to say that I started to feel comfortable calling myself a writer when I did two things--A) got several hundred thousand words behind me, and B) stopped caring about whether or not people liked hearing that. People make value judgements about whether or not we're "real" writers by whether or not we've published anything, and I can't control that imulse in them. What I can do is look at my life for the last fifteen years and note that the singular thread running through my sense of self is that I write--therefore I am a writer.
Another lurker stepping out of the shadows here...
Have any of you placed their unpublished fiction online and regretted it?
I ask because I've placed a novel online after I got lots of support from (honest and trustworthy) beta readers and some truly positive comments from agents. Yet I'm very much aware that the work hasn't been professionally edited (though I live with a non-fiction editor, which helps).
I'm going to answer Michael's question in a post, and I'm also curious what answers people might have to Antony's question... For myself, I almost never put unpublished stories online, so I don't have any experience one way or the other.
Antony,
Glad to have you post. I've never posted anything online that wasn't already published, and I suspect that's the case for most of us in the Wyrdsmiths.
I imagine the situation is going to be affected enormously by goals. If the main thing you're looking for is to express yourself and be read, there may be a lot to say for taking stuff online. I know of quite a few writers who are perfectly happy with blogging or giving away their stories.
If you're primarily looking to have a career in writing, that's something else entirely. I know of only a very small number of professional fiction writers who've gotten into the business through the web.
My own goal has always been to make enough money as a storyteller so that I didn't have to do anything else. Being read is a necessary step toward that goal, but is not the goal itself. So, I do have free stories online, but they've been published previously and they are primarily out there so people can get a feel for what my fiction is like and hopefully go buy a book.
So really, the question you'll have to ask yourself is what is your long term goal for your writing and does posting the novel serve that goal?
Thanks for the answers.
My novel is online almost as an experiment. I'm happy with it and I like that it's out there. I'm curious to see if anybody takes to it. It's not there to attract agents or publishers because I think that isn't even possible unless one already has a large online following (such as John Scalzi did when he wrote Agent To The Stars).
However, I am aiming for a paid career as an author. Which is why, with my latest novel, I'm sending sample chapters and query letters to appropriate agents and playing the game they way it is best played.
Antony,
It sounds like you're going about your experiment with that novel and pursuit of representation with this one in an entirely sensible way. Good luck.
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