Sadly enough many new writers won't be able to tell you where that quote came from and that's not even the problem. What you have to do is ask yourself if anything has really changed. If you've been writing for any decent amount of time then you normally have gotten a limited number of responses when someone finds out. "Oh, that's nice!" "Wow, good luck! I never knew you were a writer." Or, "That's cool, I've always had this book idea, but never had time to write it myself." So in short people are either overjoyed, under impressed or have aspired to be writers themselves.
Why would it shock you that there are so many new writers now? If you take to the forums you'll find thread after thread complaining about all the new writers and the assumed crap they flood the market with. To a degree there's some truth to that, but should people that consider themselves "real writers" be worried?
The other day I read a posting from a new author asking why his book wasn't selling. He'd published it the day before. So people asked for a link. When he did finally post a link, boy did they tear him a new one. The grammar was horrible (I suck at grammar myself), the cover art looked like what my two year old son does at daycare and the writing itself was down right atrocious. The quality of the book was not even the shocking part. When confronted about it he said he knew. He went on to say how people should buy it and that it was his first work and he would obviously get better the more he wrote. What the hell is wrong with this guy?
Then it hit me. This is awesome! I mean aside from the fact that he represents what many people think of authors. Which is "so easy a caveman could do it." What really got me thinking was the fact that the more crap that makes its way out the better my little offerings look. Think about it, do top notch plastic surgeons worry about the shady surgeons and their basement bottom prices? Nope, they just keep doing what they're doing because like my mama always said, you get what you pay for.
Eventually all of those not so much writers that thought this was gonna be some easy fun money making time, they'll realize it's probably easier to learn to daytrade. If you've never written for twelve hours straight, fueled off redbull and pure desire only to throw away everything you've just did, then you don't understand. But for those of you that have you know, "it's hard out here for a pimp."
Writing is no joke. You pour your heart and soul into something, many times working on it for months or longer with no guarantee that even your best friend will purchase it. You sacrifice countless hours of sleep worrying about people that don't even exist to the rest of the world.
For all those that think this is easy I implore you to give it a go. Have at it, write your heart out. I'm convinced that if the market is flooded with enough crap then even my sub par scribblings will seem like the stuff of legend. Worst case it's terribly entertaining to read about all these peoples ridiculous expectations. I mean even if you had written the next "Odyssey" how on earth wold the world learn about it?
Okay, I've taken way too much time away from writing. I must get back to my lonely plot of characters before they kill each other. Besides I'm sure my rambling has done more to confuse people than actually state a real position. ---Tootles
No comments:
Post a Comment