It's been a while since I posted anything on here so forgive me if someone already posted about this.
I came across this article the other day and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I'm not sure what the author was trying to do -- inspire people to quit or inspire people to work harder -- either way, it felt like there was no right answer.
As an aspiring writer myself, I was part of the "maybe she's right" group. There are some wonderful writers in this forum and I'm wondering what your opinions are.
Is she right?
No. I call bullshit on all three of those "points."
I will concede to a degree in that, yes, it's hard to make a well-written novel and then turn that into a huge profit, but this game gets easier the longer you play it. Her article to me reads like a cautionary tale, more in the vein of "don't tread into this lightly." You could make the same case for any creative field: art, music, etc.
I think the thing to take away from it is: don't enter the game thinking you're going to blow up right away. It's going to be years before you start to see any success, acclaim, or money. The path is arduous, not impossible.
This almost reminds of going on a date with a bitter woman and sitting through her litany of shitty ex-boyfriend stories and lists of things she doesn't want in a man.
I think a mentality like the one portrayed in the article is dangerous to the creative arts and literature in general. If you want to write, who the fuck cares if you make money. If it makes you happy, do it. I am almost wondering if this is some half assed attempt at motivation.
"“Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” ― Cormac McCarthy.
I guess if you are in this to become as wealthy and prolific as James Patterson, she might be right. I don't know anyone who is writing and submitting seriously who thinks it is a cake walk, and I don't know any writer that doesn't have swings of extreme doubt punctuated by small, thrilling moments where we think we've "got it".
To be honest, I don't know what that article could be trying to accomplish other than a little masturbation on the part of the author. A nice smug smile and a pat on the head? Like most people who have thrown their work out there and worked their asses off haven't gotten that from a large number of people?
And, as usual, it is written from the perspective of someone who is doing quite okay for themselves, check out her bio:
ABOUT ME
I'm a freelance journalist. I've written for Newsweek, Details, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire, Salon, Slate, The Daily Beast, Variety, The LA Weekly, Esquire.com, Inc.com, TheAtlantic.com, and The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2008, TIME.com named me one of the best bloggers of the year. I've appeared on "Politically Incorrect," CNN, and NPR.So she's not a millionaire. There are a lot of essayists and journalists that would do terrible things for a bio like that. Take it with a grain of salt. No one is going to believe in you enough for you not to believe in yourself, and no one is going to do the work for you. Least of all some blogger for Forbes who is just trying to get page views.
So she's not a millionaire. But there are a lot of essayists and journalists that would do terrible things for a bio like that. Take it with a grain of salt and leave it. No one is going to believe in you enough for you not to believe in yourself, and no one is going to do the work for you. Least of all some blogger for Forbes who is just trying to hit big enough nerve to get maximum page views.
If you can't laugh an article like that off in about 30 seconds, you don't need to be at the keyboard with a word file you want to be a novel open.
Thats a fancy camera she is showing off in her author photo. Maybe I'll send her an email about why she shouldn't be a photographer.
Thank you to everyone that responded. Intuitively I felt what the author of the article said was more of a warning than anything, but the self-doubter in me sort of took it to heart.
Hearing from all of you though has lifted my spirits and allowed me to be happy about writing again--whether I get published or not.
That's what makes the Litreactor community so amazing.
It struck me as sour grapes on her part. Like this cooz has these perceivably prestigious writing credits but cant get a book deal.
Dave it can be both a (what I said earlier about being important to be able laugh it off) and b (this silly lady being bitter).
Besides making a middle income living off of some combination of articles, art, etc. is still way better then working a in cubical like so many folks are stuck doing. It is like she mad her work life is only better then ALMOST everyone.
It is like she mad her work life is only better then ALMOST everyone.
What the what?
It struck me as sour grapes on her part. Like this cooz has these perceivably prestigious writing credits but cant get a book deal.
Did you read the comments? Apparently she is putting excerpts of her novel up on her personal blog. I just had a little tee-hee at that.
I dont think there's a word in the english language that rightly expresses my reaction to this
Well... wait. Doesn't anyone agree with this article? There are a ton of people writing who just aren't good enough. People who don't have a findamental grasp of effective language. People who can't differentiate between good and bad writing. People who just don't write with passion. Let these sub-literate fan-fiction net-speak zeroes die off and let the writers write. With internet, self-publishing etc, the readers have become the gatekeepers--so let's fucking keep the gate! This Forbes blogger is not talking to you! She is talking to people who aren't serious about art and craft and wringing every spare jot of meaning from each and every word! I won't support these dilettantes, and neither should you.
She is talking to people who aren't serious about art and craft
I agree, and anyone who doesnt have thick enough skin to disregard what she said probably also lacks the tenacity to work their craft until it rises to the top of the cloudied literary gene pool.
No excuse to piss on everyone's parade, though, just because she had a bad day. And thats the problem, shes saying that if you want to write, dont. Lumping everyone in with the likes of which JGB speaks.
Well... wait. Doesn't anyone agree with this article? There are a ton of people writing who just aren't good enough. People who don't have a findamental grasp of effective language. People who can't differentiate between good and bad writing. People who just don't write with passion. Let these sub-literate fan-fiction net-speak zeroes die off and let the writers write. With internet, self-publishing etc, the readers have become the gatekeepers--so let's fucking keep the gate! This Forbes blogger is not talking to you! She is talking to people who aren't serious about art and craft and wringing every spare jot of meaning from each and every word! I won't support these dilettantes, and neither should you.
There'd be no point in detering those kind of people from writing though, they'll never really get to the point where it becomes a significant part of their life. It'd make more sense if it were aimed at the same kind of writers that can schlock out some article like this for a couple hundred bucks and feel like they're totally not wasting their time. There might be a little of her trying to legitimize her own marginal success, but I think these kind of tirades or more guileless than that. There's an article on this here site that's supposed to be about how to write comics called "Don't Write Comics," as if that's fuckin helpful at all or gives any authority to your how-to knowledge. Though, too, it's common sense. There's no money in writing, it's pretty really stupid to try to make a career out of it. So I think these kind of articles are more innocent than my or everyone's first reactions would think. The thing where these fall apart is, really, writing isn't that difficult. For some reason these people like to pretend it is. The article isn't anything special writing-wise, and they got paid whatever 50 cents a word or something for the hour it took to write, and for most writers that's the best kinda gig they get regularly. That's par for writing. It's not much but it's easy. I don't see people staying up until 3 in the morning stocking shelves or sinking rebar just as a hobby, though.
I think the thing is if you can be convinced not to write and can actually follow through with it, probably the better for you then in the long run. It's not supposed to make sense, I guess.
That blog post is anything but an example of unattainably good writing, yet the post is about how people aren't good enough writers. If she's good enough, so are many. It's not bad, it's not shitty writing; it's that "I'm smart enough to argue that these non-sentences I produce mimic speech/facebook updates and are therefore acceptable" stuff: the "I'm going to write this in a tone not unlike the condescending head-patting tongue-flap I might give someone who, wasn't so much a 'friend,' but, I liked enough to 'get real with them' for a minute" which is so common and easily achieved, there would be no need to teach it in school even if it were something to which people aspired rather than something upon which they settle.
Notice: no one in this thread said she was not a 'good writer.' The empirical fact-of-the-matter is: all you have to do is write like you speak; once you do that, the only judgment anyone will pass will be upon the statements you make, not your style, because there's nothing wrong with writing like you speak provided you can transmit complete thoughts using words.
So basically, assuming she doesn't have a day job besides blogging, she's saying that the "it" one must have in order to be a pro is not "extraordinary talent." Right?
[Not to mention the fact she bills herself as giving 'irreverent life and work advice.' Salt shaker, please.]
Well if you want to make pocket money in freelance journo and blogging you do have to do the grind, send out queries all day and write about this kind of bullshit for a couple hours. So basically put in the same work as into any day job. Writing fiction or, you know, real journalism/non-fiction, making money at it and not having everyone think you're a fucking joke probably has a bit of a different talent/skill/grind ratio.
If you actually manage to make money at it (either one,) I figure it means someone thinks you're not a joke, regardless of anyone who does.
J.Y. I'm more likely to pay someone who is a joke then anything else. Money means you've entertaining, which can include being funny.
I agree with Jeffrey. The people here aren't the people she wants to read it. I think we're all fairly serious about improving and writing well. I felt like the article was aimed more towards the people we laugh at, too. We think she's being a bitch because we think she's saying it to us, but if you think of that one person you wish would give up writing reading it... you'd probably get where she's coming from.
Although I do also agree that she's probably bitter and tired of "shitty" writers being more successful than her.
Eh. A year ago I was puttering around on Word documents without a clue as to how to go forward. She made a comment in the comments section about people emailing her to ask for advice and not knowing the business end. No one knows a damn thing about the business end without someone talking them through it--whether that someone is writing an article found on a google search or one of the many people here on this site that are willing to give realistic advice without coming off like they pity the new kids.
A master storyteller never explains. I stole that today. She is certainly a master, for such a small fluff article she gained 18 pages of mostly thoughtful counter argument. She's right, she's wrong, they're right and they're wrong. Eighteen pages of conversation. I feel like going back and scraping it for the points of debate. I have a friend who trolled as much as I did back in the day in the usenet groups and site forums. He grabbed a gig at tech blog paying by the article, so he read and digested tech news in his pj's that he would have read anyway for free then he summed it up and posted his opinions and observations and they paid him for that. His articles, the ones commissioned for the weekend paid even better and his click through rates were near 100% page 1 - 9 or 5 or 12 and there were pages of comments.
Nope this girl knew what she was up to. On the one hand she is beating down the competition and burning dreams on the other she is enjoying the building going up in flames from everyone with an opinion. I found one priceless quote out of the comments: "No one accepts unfavorable truth as his or her personal reality."
It's something I'm interested in, that article's comments, so thanks Saul. In return I give one of my favourite sites for your consideration. It's both wide and deep. One of the contributors did a huge fan fiction of 'Harry Potter's' universe which could possibly have been better than JK's. http://lesswrong.com/
Commodification. She sells cynical screeds by the seashore. She probably owns a trophy case.
Y'know, there's a real art to conceiving a universe in your mind, and trying to convey that to others. Hi, I'm Ken...I don't know if I've ever posted anything on this forum up until now. Well, the October Flash thing...anyway, it's nice to be here. I am a paying member, but I'm not really up to par.
I am not all that great of a writer (not fishing, you've never read any fiction I've written), but stories and fake worlds live and breathe in my mind all day, every day. Writing, conceiving, is the only way I know of to reconcile the ideas that refuse to go away; they appear whenever I watch a movie or a TV show; they show up in the middle of a page I'm reading. Sure, sometimes they're derivative distillations of something greater - but they exist - and I HAVE to get them out. I'm bothered by this Forbes article because even though I'm not Hemingway, there's still an art to what I'm doing. Maybe my flightless paper airplane isn't origami, but there's sweat in every fold. I am over-sensitive, hard on myself, and full of doubt - I tell myself I can't write all the time - yet I can't fight its Death Star magnetism.
Normally, I lurk on this site, because I feel a bit ashamed to even try and "hang" with this talented crowd who all seem to know each other. I've always been socially awkward and a wallflower - and here I'm this wannabe nothing using the cloak of cyber-anonymity to pose as one of the talents that belongs here. I'm walking the halls of this country club pretending I'm not the caddy.
The point of this tirade is, the lady who wrote that Forbes article upset me. She is stomping on people like me, who take part in the art, but will likely never be published (though I admit, I'd like to be - if I improve), nor have any interest in selling soul-crushing "advice" pieces to consumer-porn rags.
My ego is fragile, I admit it - I am prone to pessimism about my own work; and this Forbes article writer has written something mean-spirited that at first blush had me feeling down. Then I realized she's dead flat wrong.
In my opinion everyone is - or at least - can be a writer. No, maybe not in the tweed jacket and pipe way, or the writing closet in Prague with a three-quarters empty bottle of Jack and a revolver in the drawer way either; but everyone has stories to tell, it's just a matter of finding your best way.
I'm writing all of this because my immediate emotional reaction to what she'd written in that article compelled me to say something - ANYTHING - when most of the time I'd keep my thoughts to myself out of shyness. We can't all be David Foster Wallace or Craig Clevenger or Gordon Highland - but according to Madam Article Writer - we ought to be, or we should just pack it in, and ignore the stories that refuse to go untold.
I know this will all come across as overly earnest, or glib, or self-pitying - but this article got under my skin. It serves no purpose, and has no reason to exist other than to leave bruises. How do I know? Because every single word she wrote is something even the best writers have at some point said to themselves. Okay, so maybe she is just a dog chasing cars, but I worry that a popular article like that might be enough for the less-skilled writers like me to hurt and contemplate throwing in their writerly towels only to realize the ideas do not stop, and all we're left with is the crushing realization that we have to write anyway, and that it will never be good enough.
My ego is fragile, I admit it - I am prone to pessimism about my own work; and this Forbes article writer has written something mean-spirited that at first blush had me feeling down. Then I realized she's dead flat wrong.
@kward: Hey that was a great commercial - split it into two voices - hers and yours, your best friend and you, two parties here that you admire and I would review it and certainly vote for it in a round of War if you bent it to a prompt. Your comment was thoughtful, inspiring and heartfelt thanks for taking the time to refute her trolling.
"“Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” ― Cormac McCarthy.
Awesome Matt... That's it right there.
The impression I get is she is targeting people who call themselves 'writers' for the status, social chic, etc. and telling them they haven't thought their pretention through. That being said, she is only addressing writing as a means to an end, a finished product, a book on the shelves. She is missing the entire point, in my opinion. The joy of writing, the pleasure of putting words to page, that is why we do it. A finished book, a publishing deal, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, all these things would be nice, but the ultimate goal is the satisfaction of creating, not the figures on a spreadsheet. As it stands she is a blogger, tweeter, general attention whore, and so it may be that she only writes to gain appreciation. Look at me, the Time website said I was one of the best (people-who-write-shit-that-nobody-reads-except-other-)bloggers of 2008, I must be special. Come see my Twitter feed, it's full of amusing musings. Fuck off.
i actually agree with her. a lot of people are mediocre authors, or even good authors, and they will never succeed. it is hard work, and it takes many years, as brandon said. and, it's very hard to make an actual living at it. she's 100% accurate on all three points. BUT, if you do have the ability, and a unique POV, and are willing to put in the hours, days, weeks, years it takes to hone your craft and learn where to send it, you MIGHT be able to break through.
i've been doing this five years, have one book out, 60+ stories published, an agent, an MFA, and i still feel like a total failure. why? because the reality of my earnings are pretty sad. even if you made $20,000 a year you couldn't live off of that. BUT, all it takes is one bit of success, that lucky moment when everything aligns. you could land in the right anthology, you coud sell your novel and end up moving 50,000 copies earning you over 100k a year, you could sell the film rights and get a check for $40k. anythign can happen. if you don't put yourself out there, you'll never know.
so i guess what i'm saying is be prepared to wait, you have to be patient, and be prepared to work very hard at your craft. if you are good, no, if you are GREAT (and you'll know soon enough, not only from the feedback you get here at LR, but from editors who snatch up your work and TELL YOU how awesome you are) and have the drive and passion and vision, amazing things can happen.
it's a glorious feeling to have people from all over the world respond to your writing with sincerely powerful emotions, gratitude, and love. it's a feeling i haven't gotten just about anywhere else in my life.
Richard---
The difference between the argument she presented and what you said, is that you aren't giving the impression that you are somehow better than the vast majority of writers, and so it's worth it for YOU to stay in the game.
I think that's what rubbed me the wrong way. I think it is good to be reminded of how hard it's going to be from time to time--in a way, it almost feels good to remember that it doesn't happen for ANYONE overnight. But there are people like you--who reach across the aisle to a lot of less accomplished writers, and do what you can to help, and there are people like her--who are snidely laughing at the people who email her with questions about writing because they "don't understand the business side". Her comments in the comment section are just as snarky and nasty, if not moreso.
ah, didn't read her snarky comments, and you make some good points about her overall tone and attitude. i wsa focusing on the content.
What if the whole thing was nothing but a product of her own self-doubt? I mean does anybody here want to be a pro blogger? I guess there are people for whom her current level of "success" would be desirable, perhaps enviable, but for me this is ultimately a case of the NBD's.
EDIT -- turns out she's also published a few stories and been on TV
Blogging just seems so disposable...so in-tune with our 24 hour news cycle: a hot topic one minute, replaced by sky-diving pugs or a leaked movie review the next. It's AA baseball to the major leagues, a 'not my ideal but I guess this is okay' kind of vocation. There's an elitism in her tone, but there's also a distinguishable hint of sour grapes, as if she was touched in her bathing suit area by the industry and hasn't quite recovered.
Makes me wonder if Miss Breslin has a novel floating in limbo we don't know about.
Bottom line: why would you make a massive life decision (to stop writing) based on what some random girl on the internet says.
Makes me wonder if Miss Breslin has a novel floating in limbo we don't know about.
She does. She's been publishing excerpts on her personal blog. Really, the comments section is entertaining reading.
@JY: Mira Grant writes from a pro-blogger persuasion in her book - "Feed". It's a trilogy if you get hooked by reading the reviews at amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Feed-Newsflesh-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B003GFIVSE/ref=sr_...
so in-tune with our 24 hour news cycle: a hot topic one minute
Yeah. Of course there are people who would love to be either the CNN head-talker or the one-minute topic.
______
@fport --- 1800 e-pages of blogs and zombies? Nein, danke. EDIT --- "actually pretty good"
God that novel Feed was so fucking boring. And awful. Awfully boring. It is infinibad.
@el jeffrey: Feed the Grotepas? Or Feed the Grant? I've read both, perhaps my standards are way lower than yours...wait, yes, yes, they are way lower. One thinks however that one must read the gobshite to know the difference between mediocre and bad. Actually I was sourcing for new ideas and seeing how other people handled them. Cheap thrills. I only mentioned it because someone asked the question:
I mean does anybody here want to be a pro blogger?
Pro blogger would be a cooler gig than a lot of crap jobs I've done. It's few and far between where you can stay at home and smoke as much as you want, drink what you want, listen to what you want, and jerk your wiener off while at the same time being paid to dick around with minimal results.
^ Yeah, considering it a "job," it wouldn't be so bad. Might even be fun. But as an ultimate writing goal, I figure it's not on many people's lists.
@Jeffrey 'The Penetrator' Grant Barr: You know I may have answered too hastily, have you tried The Variant Effect? Better story but no blogging.
@fport: I have not, but I had a look at the site, and it looks pretty damned interesting. I put it on my Kindle for my TBR list. Cheers!
