Post by Piken Sander on Dec 10, 2007 2:25:05 GMT -5
I wanted to write all my life, blank pages call to me, and I love the creativity of expression. I have had a number of ‘day jobs’ in my life, some of which I write about, including being a nurse and an accountant, but I have always written. In recent years I have phased out the other jobs to focus on writing longer and more complex pieces.
I am a nonfiction and fiction writer, a professional editor, and a writing teacher. How many of you want to be a writer? If you said yes...WRONG ANSWER. Let me rephrase: How many of you ARE a writer? Your hand should be up. I'm here to talk you OUT of becoming a writer. If I can do that, it’s a good thing. If I CAN’T do that, it’s a GREAT thing.
Skills needed: a satisfactory command of the language, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You must possess the desire to express yourself, to inform or enlighten or entertain. How does the worker perform these tasks? (Hold up pen and paper) I can’t believe you haven’t already, but become computer literate. Unless your daddy’s name is Donald Trump, a secretary would eat up all your income, and more and more things all the time can be submitted by e-mail. Second serious urging: when you leave here today, run don’t walk to the nearest bookstore and buy this book (hold open blank journal). Can anyone tell me why? I know a woman who, 35 years after she served as a nurse in the Vietnam war, she was able to recreate scenes with breathtaking accuracy for the novel she's just about to hand to her agent. She could never have done that from memory alone. She'd kept four journals spanning a total of 21 months, and decades later she could tell you what they ate or wore on a given day, actual dialogue, how a flower smelled, what she thought or felt.
Never underestimate your OWN story or something you witness as you are writing. A friend won a national award for a story about a 9/11-survivor friend of hers who suffered from such post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt that he attempted suicide, TWICE. From his intervention came the piece entitled “Intervention”. BTW he’s fine now, recently vacationed in New Zealand touring Lord of the Ring sites, lucky dog, and he now is the Chief Financial Officer of an international conglomerate. Online journals are fine, but can be hacked. I am a member of a private journaling site that is by invitation only. Only your irksome siblings and nosy parents can hack a book, and you can hide it, I did.
I work at home in my jammies. I’ll shower like a decent human being, and just put on clean pajamas and slippers. I might have more PJ’s than street clothes. Some people need the discipline of getting up at the same time every day, getting dressed and ready, as if to go off to an office. You’ll figure out what works for you. I happen to be seriously nocturnal, I often write all night and sleep all day, and many of my foreign commercial markets are in time zones that gel perfectly with this.
Money, of course, is a reward for writing, but if that’s your only passion, your only motivation, it will tell in your work. Your passion MUST be for words. How many of you read a lot? Again, every hand should be up, and I don’t mean Seventeen or Marvel Comics or PEOPLE magazine, I mean real books. I own a couple thousand books, of just about every genre. I read voraciously, and I even read my own works. If I don’t like them, how can I expect anyone else to. Your rewards are as much in the intellectual and emotional realm as financial, but believe me, a hard-working writer can make a good living. But also believe this, it IS work, it is a craft you must hone and refine and improve every day, and it’s up to you to submit your work and follow up, no one will do this for you.
I sold my first story at eight years old. The late Santa Barbara humor writer Francis Weaver didn’t start writing till she was over 70. I am an outspoken champion of advanced education, but I never took a creative writing class in college. I’m not saying there aren’t good university writing programs, but I found the mind-expanding aspect of education far more important than any actual class I took. I highly recommend studying abroad for at least a semester if you can swing it, a year is better. I studied in Germany for 15 months. The greatest impact on my writing comes from belonging to writers’ groups and attending writers’ conferences, a good one happens where I live every June.
One can be a writer without belonging to any group or holding any license. Depending on what kind of writing you get into, you may find certain things required of you or that some of these things benefit you. To be successful in TV or movies you must belong to the Writers Guild. My favorite writing mentor belongs to the Wine Writers Association.
THERE ARE NO LIMITS. Every field uses writing. Education and life experience help. Don’t limit your own scope. People ask me what kind of writing I do. I answer, everything. If there is a possibility of getting paid to do something, the only line I’ve ever drawn is against pornography. I find that, if a subject interests me enough that I want to write about it, why shouldn’t I, whether fiction or nonfiction, sci fi, romance, poetry, whatever. I have even written two-going-on-three novel-length collaborative fanfics for sheer enjoyment. I launched a commercial-writing web business to aid foreign businesses with their English-language documents, such as instruction manuals and news releases and publicity.
Will the occupation last? The manner in which you express your words may change as technology advances, but words themselves are never going to be replaced. Everything and nothing can and will affect job possibilities, how’s that for vague. Let me put it this way: I rarely choose to write a piece based on anything but what my own heart and soul tell me to do. Am I always on the mark? NO. I hit often enough to win awards and collect commissions. As for an eventual call for retraining, you’d serve yourself and your creativity to never stop learning, whether from conferences or writers’ groups or even further formal education.
There are as many professional opportunities for a writer as there are topics about which to write. There aren’t any special or unique physical or social skills necessary for becoming a successful writer, other than your own perseverance. But if you can’t handle rejection, this isn’t the profession for you. Even for an established writer, the rejection rate can be 90%. Trust me, the 10% of acceptances makes this all worthwhile. It doesn’t hurt to be able to speak in public. We need to be able to present and promote our work, defend our ideas. Many publishers REQUIRE this of writers, especially book-length writers. A definite plus is that you can see the world while promoting your work and it might be tax deductible. There isn’t a race, creed, culture, color, political or personal opinion NOT represented within the profession of writing. This is the one profession where HAVING a different perspective can actually be an advantage or asset.
YOU NEED GOALS. Write them down, look at them all the time. I have so many ideas and outlines written down that I’ll never be able to write out all of them in my lifetime. I want to try anyway. ;D
I am a nonfiction and fiction writer, a professional editor, and a writing teacher. How many of you want to be a writer? If you said yes...WRONG ANSWER. Let me rephrase: How many of you ARE a writer? Your hand should be up. I'm here to talk you OUT of becoming a writer. If I can do that, it’s a good thing. If I CAN’T do that, it’s a GREAT thing.
Skills needed: a satisfactory command of the language, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You must possess the desire to express yourself, to inform or enlighten or entertain. How does the worker perform these tasks? (Hold up pen and paper) I can’t believe you haven’t already, but become computer literate. Unless your daddy’s name is Donald Trump, a secretary would eat up all your income, and more and more things all the time can be submitted by e-mail. Second serious urging: when you leave here today, run don’t walk to the nearest bookstore and buy this book (hold open blank journal). Can anyone tell me why? I know a woman who, 35 years after she served as a nurse in the Vietnam war, she was able to recreate scenes with breathtaking accuracy for the novel she's just about to hand to her agent. She could never have done that from memory alone. She'd kept four journals spanning a total of 21 months, and decades later she could tell you what they ate or wore on a given day, actual dialogue, how a flower smelled, what she thought or felt.
Never underestimate your OWN story or something you witness as you are writing. A friend won a national award for a story about a 9/11-survivor friend of hers who suffered from such post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt that he attempted suicide, TWICE. From his intervention came the piece entitled “Intervention”. BTW he’s fine now, recently vacationed in New Zealand touring Lord of the Ring sites, lucky dog, and he now is the Chief Financial Officer of an international conglomerate. Online journals are fine, but can be hacked. I am a member of a private journaling site that is by invitation only. Only your irksome siblings and nosy parents can hack a book, and you can hide it, I did.
I work at home in my jammies. I’ll shower like a decent human being, and just put on clean pajamas and slippers. I might have more PJ’s than street clothes. Some people need the discipline of getting up at the same time every day, getting dressed and ready, as if to go off to an office. You’ll figure out what works for you. I happen to be seriously nocturnal, I often write all night and sleep all day, and many of my foreign commercial markets are in time zones that gel perfectly with this.
Money, of course, is a reward for writing, but if that’s your only passion, your only motivation, it will tell in your work. Your passion MUST be for words. How many of you read a lot? Again, every hand should be up, and I don’t mean Seventeen or Marvel Comics or PEOPLE magazine, I mean real books. I own a couple thousand books, of just about every genre. I read voraciously, and I even read my own works. If I don’t like them, how can I expect anyone else to. Your rewards are as much in the intellectual and emotional realm as financial, but believe me, a hard-working writer can make a good living. But also believe this, it IS work, it is a craft you must hone and refine and improve every day, and it’s up to you to submit your work and follow up, no one will do this for you.
I sold my first story at eight years old. The late Santa Barbara humor writer Francis Weaver didn’t start writing till she was over 70. I am an outspoken champion of advanced education, but I never took a creative writing class in college. I’m not saying there aren’t good university writing programs, but I found the mind-expanding aspect of education far more important than any actual class I took. I highly recommend studying abroad for at least a semester if you can swing it, a year is better. I studied in Germany for 15 months. The greatest impact on my writing comes from belonging to writers’ groups and attending writers’ conferences, a good one happens where I live every June.
One can be a writer without belonging to any group or holding any license. Depending on what kind of writing you get into, you may find certain things required of you or that some of these things benefit you. To be successful in TV or movies you must belong to the Writers Guild. My favorite writing mentor belongs to the Wine Writers Association.
THERE ARE NO LIMITS. Every field uses writing. Education and life experience help. Don’t limit your own scope. People ask me what kind of writing I do. I answer, everything. If there is a possibility of getting paid to do something, the only line I’ve ever drawn is against pornography. I find that, if a subject interests me enough that I want to write about it, why shouldn’t I, whether fiction or nonfiction, sci fi, romance, poetry, whatever. I have even written two-going-on-three novel-length collaborative fanfics for sheer enjoyment. I launched a commercial-writing web business to aid foreign businesses with their English-language documents, such as instruction manuals and news releases and publicity.
Will the occupation last? The manner in which you express your words may change as technology advances, but words themselves are never going to be replaced. Everything and nothing can and will affect job possibilities, how’s that for vague. Let me put it this way: I rarely choose to write a piece based on anything but what my own heart and soul tell me to do. Am I always on the mark? NO. I hit often enough to win awards and collect commissions. As for an eventual call for retraining, you’d serve yourself and your creativity to never stop learning, whether from conferences or writers’ groups or even further formal education.
There are as many professional opportunities for a writer as there are topics about which to write. There aren’t any special or unique physical or social skills necessary for becoming a successful writer, other than your own perseverance. But if you can’t handle rejection, this isn’t the profession for you. Even for an established writer, the rejection rate can be 90%. Trust me, the 10% of acceptances makes this all worthwhile. It doesn’t hurt to be able to speak in public. We need to be able to present and promote our work, defend our ideas. Many publishers REQUIRE this of writers, especially book-length writers. A definite plus is that you can see the world while promoting your work and it might be tax deductible. There isn’t a race, creed, culture, color, political or personal opinion NOT represented within the profession of writing. This is the one profession where HAVING a different perspective can actually be an advantage or asset.
YOU NEED GOALS. Write them down, look at them all the time. I have so many ideas and outlines written down that I’ll never be able to write out all of them in my lifetime. I want to try anyway. ;D