Damned fine writing advice

[yendi]

Brian Keene, a damned fine horror writer (best known, to me at least, for The Rising and City of the Dead), has started a second blog (his primary, of course remains Hail Saten) called World Domination 101, dedicated to offering advice to writers. This entry is one that everyone should read. Even if you're not a writer, or not a fan of horror, it's a damned fine look at what it takes to make ends meet as a writer.

Comments

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

is there an lj feed set up for that one, yet?

[yendi]

I haven't seen any info on an atom/rss feed over there, alas. :-(

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

YOU FAILED ME.

[yendi]

That's what I told my Calc teacher back in high school. She shrugged it off, too.

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Excellent link to the "How To Make Ends Meet" essay. I really appreciated it. It makes me appreciate my temp job all that much more. I'll definitely check out his books as well.

[yendi]

They're damned good. And definitely read the other posts at WD101 -- they're all worth checking out!

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

This follows closely with Sun Tzu's advice that one must know one's self before one can properly engage the enemy (or publishing business, as it may be in this case).

[yendi]

Very true.

[kizlj.livejournal.com]

that's nifty that he attached actual numbers. I've read lots of essays like that before, but few that go into the cold, hard economics.

and it makes me grr all the more that more people (I'm looking at you, college creative writing professors) don't point out that if you're a hardcore Artiste about your writing, then for god's sake, get a day job. when I took a novel-writing class last year, about half the class wanted to do writing fulltime. what I kept saying over and over is, your job is the thing you will have to make compromises on to pay your bills. being nice to the asshole boss. letting quality slip a bit it make numbers. whatever. if you have a non-writing day-job, then you can be as artistic as you want with your writing, knowing that you don't *have* to sell it anywhere you don't want to, or write what your agent says will sell, or whatever. if fiction writing *is* your job, it becomes the thing you do for money, not love. which is fine, and it can be an awesome thing to do for money, but it's equally fine to earn a living elsewhere and not put commercial pressure on your creative stuff. you can't be a part-time brain surgeon. you can be a part-time writer.

[yendi]

*nod*

Seeing those numbers was crucial. I know so many folks who seem to assume that selling that one genre novel will make their career. Knowing that it's not enough to even qualify for the poverty line is something everyone needs pounded into their heads.