Ignore -- just a rant
Boy, am I tired of people who come up and tell me that they are thinking of writing a book, and just blithely carry on like they can sit down and write a book, contact a publisher, and get a big contract, all in a few weeks' time.
I mentioned it was a bit more difficult than one person realized, and that it might be good to learn more about the craft of fiction writing as a starting point.
The flippant response was that this person got good grades in high school writing classes so they should be fine.
*deep sigh*
posted by L. S. King @ 2:50 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Is this before or after they know you're a writer? Just wish them good luck, and ask them to give you the name of their agent. lol ~Samm, who understands...
Oh, after, of course.
One person stated authoritatively I didn't know what I was doing and he could get a book published within a year.
I told him to go ahead and get me published then. And I said I wasn't picky, I'd take DAW, Baen, Del Rey, Tor, Spectra...
It's been a couple of years and he's not gotten me published yet.
Have you been talking to my dh???? :)
Some people have to learn the hard way.....
Somehow, it seems like people think writing is easy...most people seem to think that painting, poetry, sculpture, music, and all them fine arts are vastly difficult and require years of hard work to perfect, but writing fiction...nah, anyone can do that. Just bang off a book and send it in. I can do better than all that garbage on the shelves, can't I?
It's probably because an amateur novel looks very similar to a professional one, whereas an amateur sculpture doesn't look much like Michaelangelo's David. Both novels have paragraphs of description, dialogue, and action, chapters, characters, and a plot. Some readers can barely tell the difference--but it is there, and it's critical. Writing is a craft every bit as difficult as any other.
Hear, hear, Sean!
That's why I often refer to it as the craft of writing.
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