The traditional publishing model, if not dying, is being forced to evolve. And while The Way Things Are shift closer to The Way Things Were, many people are celebrating the fact that electronic formats make self-publishing an option for anyone with a tale to tell.
Someone once said, “A writer is not a writer without an audience.” I don’t necessarily agree, but I will say this: a serious writer will not be satisfied until he or she finds one.
In my experience, writing the end of a novel has to be the hardest part.
At a recent Allied Authors of Wisconsin meeting, I was thrilled to receive unanimously positive feedback on a particular character in the chapter I read. The only problem is all that praise went to a pretty minor character who appears in just one scene in the entire novel and doesn’t even have a name.
Close your eyes and imagine a writer. What do you see? A free-spirited young woman writing in a leather-bound journal beneath a tree?
While I didn’t become addicted to books with dragons on the cover until freshman year of high school, I had more than a few flirtations with the genre as a child.
Jealousy is an emotion we unpublished novelists know too well. Every success story of an out-of-nowhere-bestselling writer stirs up a storm of frustration, indignation, and, at times, incredulity.
Reading books with dragons on the cover says something about a guy.
The problem with stories is they require people. I’m not talking about author and reader—though they, as well as their relationship, are fraught with challenges too—but rather the individuals that populate the story itself.
If the first draft allows the writer to indulge in a carefree orgy of imagination, a Wild West of whimsy, and a devil-may-care series of experiments, then the editing process demands the writer to abstain, rein it in, and exorcise a host of demons.