Guest Blogger Mark Terry
12 Things I’ve Learned About Writing For A Living
by Mark Terry
I’ve been actively writing to get published for about 26 years. I’ve been published – and paid for the privilege – for about 18 years. I’ve been a fulltime self-employed writer for 7 years. I think I’ve learned a couple things. Interestingly enough, I wrote a similar post about 4 years ago and I had to eliminate one of the things I’ve learned having to do with agents, because I’m no longer sure I entirely agree with my statement about agents (a different topic for a different day, I suppose). But here are a few things I’ve learned.
1. Productivity is important. That means having schedules, goals, and working regularly.
2. Optimism is important. I’m probably not an optimist overall, but neither am I a pessimist. But in writing, optimism is important. You have to have hope that things will work out for the best. Sometimes another word for that is “faith.”
3. Writers are pretty cool. Neurotic and weird, but pretty cool. I’ve hung out with several at cons and in general, this is a cool group of people.
4. Spending large amounts of time in the company of imaginary people, who, as a matter of fact, you have created, is not really normal. It’s fun, but it’s kind of weird.
5. The more you value your work, the more others will, too. It’s good to be realistic about what you can charge, but be aware that somewhere out there is somebody who places a very high value on their writing and gets paid accordingly. You should too.
6. It’s a business. Writing novels is a business. Writing for a living, no matter how you do it, is a business. That means acting business-like, keeping records, proportioning time and/or money to things like office expenses and marketing and promotion.
7. Creativity is important, but a lot of people are creative. Harnessing and controlling your creativity, channeling it and putting it to work for you is what separates the pros from the amateurs, and the wannabes from the published.
8. Yes, your writing is a product. You can be an artist in your office/studio/den, but the very second you send a query or manuscript to an agent/editor/publisher, you have turned into a businessperson and you are dealing with a product. Behave accordingly.
9. Success breeds success. It’s rare to come out of the gate a winner. You have to prove yourself. For most of us, it’s one thing at a time, we build careers on a foundation of lower paying jobs, well-received but moderate sales, short stories, book reviews, whatever. It’s incremental, but it builds on itself.
10. Persistence is more important than talent. Talent is a very cheap commodity and there is a ton of product out there for editors/agents/publishers and readers to choose from. It takes persistence to get your product, whatever it is, to the right person at the right time. There are very few–if any–overnight successes.
11. You have to take risks. Perhaps we’re back to “faith” and a leap of faith. That doesn’t necessarily mean quitting your job and betting it all on the success of your unpublished novel manuscript. That’s madness. But you may need to spend money or time that you’d rather not in order to built up a clientele, you may have to write things that don’t necessarily make your spirit soar in order to pay your bills, you may have to take a risk writing something new than what you have been, you may have to do things like book signings or public speaking or travel that you don’t really want to do to make it all come together. The risk might be psychological, but there’s probably some risk involved.
12. It’s not always fun. Often it is. More often it’s rewarding. If it’s never fun, you have a problem. If the rewarding part and/the fun part don’t outweigh the unfun part, you may be in trouble and should reevaluate why you’re doing what you’re doing.
What about you? What have you learned?
http://www.markterrybooks.com/
Thanks Steve!