Rule E: publication is Earned, not rewarded

Linda’s Rules of Writing

A soldier earns medals by doing things that most people don’t want to do.

We’re onto the letter E in Linda’s Rules of Writing of the A to Z Challenge, where being published is something that is Earned.

When the military is mentioned in the media, the medals are often referred to as being “won,” which makes them sound like a prize.  Soldiers earn them through the things they do.

Publication is like that.

When print on demand first took off, writers flocked to it and believed that it was their way to get what they thought was publishing “success.”  Invariably, many ended up paying to get a physical copy of a bad book and selling to only family members.

I always thought POD gave the writers an excuse not to get better.  (They didn’t like me much when I mentioned this.).

But I kept seeing an attitude come from them, that they’d invested all this time writing this book and now they should be rewarded for the effort.  That attitude is still out there, and usually the writers with it have the most myopic view when it comes their own stories.  It’s suddenly about finding the right person to get the foot in the door, not how good the story is.

Publication is earned through hard work, and sometimes a lot of it.  Even today, with the more options for writers that include self-publishing, the readers’ interest still has to be earned.  No one gives bonus points for effort.

What kinds of things have you changed in your writing to make it better?

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Caption: A to Z Challenge

 

Rule B: take regular Breaks from writing fiction

Linda’s Rules of Writing

A grass umbrella on a beach: Sometimes sitting and doing nothing is a great break!

We’re onto the letter B in Linda’s Rules of Writing, and on the importance of taking Breaks.

If you wander the web, you’ll find plenty of advice that says “Write every day.”  There’s truth in that advice, because it’s really easy to find something else more important and not get around to writing.

But writing every day can drain the muse.  So it’s important for the creativity to be recharged.  When I was trying out all different forms of writing, including screenwriting, I managed to burn myself out from too much writing.  That’s apparently common for writers in Hollywood because they do a tremendous amount of writing.  Now I take one day a week off to do something else, or nothing at all.

Since I’m in Washington, DC, I have plenty of museums to visit, like the awesome sculpture garden for the National Art Gallery.  The National Zoo also recently opened their new Elephant Trails.

What kinds of fun things do you like to do on writing breaks?

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Caption: A to Z Challenge

 

Communication: Easy to screw up and hard to get right

I’m wandering over to Unleaded: Fuel for Writers this week with a post on communication:

For the last few weeks I’ve been taking a free philosophy course over at Coursea.  I’ve never taken the subject before, and I thought it would be useful for my writing.  This week, though, I dropped it because of bad communication.

Bad communication is often called “two tin cans and a string,” though this kitten probably isn’t helping either.

The lectures started out interesting, but I got to the second one and I couldn’t connect to the material.  I’d look at the answers to the test questions that I’d gotten wrong and didn’t understand why I’d gotten them wrong.  It was a tough lecture because nearly everyone did poorly on the test, so I thought it was me versus the material.

The professor promised the next lecture would be easier, but I found the same issue.  Then I got the test, and there were questions about information not in the lectures.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed this.  More than 20 people commented on the missing information, and everyone else was curiously silent on the quiz.  One person drove by and said, “Oh, all the answers are there.  You just have to study really, really carefully.”  If you don’t mention a widget in the lecture and it’s a question on the test, how is it there?

But that was only person who deigned to comment.  Though the professor answered questions in other threads, he ignored the ones about the missing information.  That communicated something I don’t think he intended.  I wasn’t concerned about passing the tests — not if I got an understanding of the material.  I’m a poor test taker and can get answers wrong that I know.  But this told me that I wasn’t going to learn anything, so it immediately because not a good use of time. I dropped the class (I’ll be taking the Introduction to Philosophy later on).

I always think about things like this when it comes to writing.  It’s a harder than it looks to communicate well … Read the rest on Unleaded: Fuel for Writers.

 

Not Shooting Yourself in the Foot With Your Online Image

I have a confession: I’ve been going to science fiction conventions since 1976.  My goal for many of those cons were to see actors.  Some of them were nice people and others I wouldn’t want to know.  One I became friends with.  He was always a gentleman and very aware of his image he presented to the world.  At one con, he did an interview for a horror magazine.  So when it first came out at Borders, a friend and I snatched up copies right away.   I called my friend, a little worried because the interview was laced with f-bombs.  We’d both read all his interviews in the past, more than 20 years worth, and he’d always kept it very clean.  We debated about it and wondered if the writer had added the words for that magazine.

Nope.  The actor had gotten to drinking during the interview and said the words himself.  When he saw the interview, he was livid because he’d gotten the writer to promise not to use the profanity.  But the true problem was that he’d said them in the interview in the first place.

There’s been a lot of that online lately from writers.  It’s like people have forgotten … Read the rest on Unleaded: Fuel for Writers.

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My short story “A Soldier’s Magic” appears in the anthology The Darkness Within, available from Indigo Mosaic Publishing.  It features two women soldiers who have to make a tough decision to save a lot of people.