I regularly hang out at The Passive Voice. During a discussion on Kris Rusch's recent post on "churning out" books, I mentioned I'd got some grief from other writers on my November Status Report. Someone e-mailed me privately, concerned about my experience.
Here's the deal. I've learned not to let this kind of crap bother me. Yes, it used to, but I also thought my normal bullshit meter didn't apply to the writing world. I was stupid. I was naïve.
I got over it.
There was one nasty comment. It popped up while I was online, so I caught and deleted right away. If you subscribe to comments, you may have gotten the notice. If so, delete the e-mail. I'm pretty sure it's the buddy of a former friend, who likes to troll me every once in a while. This person's crap has tapered off since I no longer associate with the former friend. Since I'm a non-Christian, I'm the equivalent of Al-Quaeda in their Tea Party minds. As GK would say, "What evs."
I received three e-mails from "friends" who are oh-so-worried about my incredibly bad decision to indie publish. But then, they've been worried for four years now. To a person, they said the same crap Kris mention on her original blog--no one will take me seriously if I write too fast. *cue eye roll*
The only person whose comment concerned me was my new writing partner, Laura Kirwan. We had a nice talk about expectations and writing speed, and I like to think we both walked away feeling a lot better about completing our joint project.
The funny thing about the November post? I didn't even mention the Alter Ego projects for 2015.
Can you imagine the eye-popping apoplexy some of these people would have if they knew? LOL
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19 hours ago
no one will take me seriously if I write too fast
ReplyDeleteUh huh. Because no one respects Nora Roberts, and her career is totally in the dumps. [eyeroll]
You really have to wonder about some folks, and their capacity for logical reasoning.
Angie
For a long time, Nora didn't mentioned she writes a book a month because she knew she'd get the same grief. And I probably shouldn't mention I did a thousand words before breakfast because you know, "churning". But I also have someone waiting on this chapter, so I need to get back to it. LOL
DeleteAnd then she became La Nora and she can do whatever she damn well wants. :)
DeleteAngie
Funny, I pretty much do whatever I damn well want now. :D
DeleteMy problem is I'm always lambasting myself for not writing fast enough because I keep hearing the "you can't possibly succeed on 2-3 books a year" meme. I have no trad pub experience. I've come up in a publishing world where a book a month is considered by many as the only path to success. I think there's plenty of people out there who want to tell both of us that we're doing it wrong, mostly because they're secretly afraid they're doing it wrong too.
ReplyDeleteLaura -- there are always folks suffering from new-convert syndrome, where they beat the drum twice as hard because they just bought it last week. When they're talking to people in their own group, that kind of enthusiasm is fine. When they're talking to people outside the group, it's uncool and rude. On behalf of the rest of us who wear the same T-shirt as those idiots, I apologize. :P
DeleteWriting more per month/year/whatever will always get you where you're going faster, but how much you write has to be balanced with your life and your other responsibilities. I'm very disappointed in myself for having written only 200K words and change last year (significantly less than 2013), but another writer I know did well to write significantly less around his day job (university professor) which requires a lot of non-fiction writing. I don't have a day job, and should be able to pass 300K easily. And in fact, I hit 200K in like July. Liferolls suck.
But your productivity depends on what else you do with your life. If you have a day job, or kids, or elderly parents who need care; if you're active in your religion, if you do volunteer work, if you have committments to clubs or organizations you belong to -- all that is going to suck up time, and it doesn't mean you're slacking.
The thing to do is figure out how much time you have per week (or month or however you want to look at it) to write, and then spend that time writing. Figure out how much you should be able to produce, if you use the time you have well, and set that as your goal. Forget Suzan's goal or mine or those of your writing group members, or whoever it is who's ragging on you. All that counts is your life, how much time you have, and what you do with that time. If you're going to lambast yourself, have it be because you blew your own goals, which you set after some realistic thought and rational analysis, not because you can't keep up with someone else whose life is very different. {{}}
Angie
Yeah, what Angie said. I say things on my public blog because it psychologically makes me accountable. Otherwise, I'd spend the day watching Supernatural instead of writing. :)
Delete