More Smart Things + Follow Up

First the smart things follow up: By coincidence* there are a bunch of folks talking about time and persistence and writing and sacrifice this week, not just Scalzi. Via Jay lake**: calendula_witch on practice, the Boston Globe's article on Grit, and one of Jay's own older posts on psychotic persistence. Also, over at the Death Pixies, Robbie Knutson on procrastination.

Next up, J. Steven York with a very smart post on agents.

Dean Wesley Smith has a smart new entry in his life without series on the catastrophic results that would follow the sudden*** destruction of copyright.

Finally, Agent Kristin Nelson has an interesting post on treating writing as a business, that I find to be both good advice on some levels and something I violently disagree with on some levels. The discussion in the comments is something I want to watch, which is a good part of why I'm linking it here. In particular, the poster who points out how very little control a writer has over the big things and in their career and the people arguing with them on the basis of believing the myth**** of self-promotion as panacea for success.

*It's actually probably the case that given the size of the internet and the number of writers out there blogging that there are always quite a few talking about this and the coincidence comes in at people I'm aware of talking about this level.

**Who talks about it as well.

***Big emphasis on the sudden there.

****And yes, I do think it's a myth that self-promotion***** can have that much impact. I know too many stories of self-promotion that failed and of books that were not self-promoted that did fantastically. I'd love to know how much self-promotion J.K. Rowling did on the Harry Potter books in the first year or two, and especially whether her publisher did a big promotion push before they started to hit or only really pushed her out on the interview and signing trail once they got going.

*****As opposed to publisher driven promotion, which is a very different animal that with a budget and publicist attached.