I admire the discipline it takes to be successful, for certain. As with a lot of truly creative work, tackling the blank page is an unstructured, solitary task that must take some mental steel.
It’s also quite a noble calling I think, if you’re talking about someone ambitious who’s really trying to do something with their writing. There’s not much in the way of tangible reward on offer - success seems to be measured in terms of not having to work a second job to support your family. Once you get past the big time celebrity authors, I dread to think what the book sales are of the less well known guys.
To echo what Jadelin said in distinguished the novel from other forms of writing, from a certain point of view the novel really is a silly load of bollox. So I’m impressed and respectful of anyone who can write novels for a living, but it does put me a little bit in mind of grand master chess or bridge players. On a certain level you’re awed at their mastery of such deep, intellectually challenging games. But on another you’re just staggered that anyone would dedicate their entire life to something so narrow and futile.
Words alone cannot express the respect I have for my husband.
On top of a demanding full time job, he started getting up at 5am to write for two hours. When he got home from work, he spent another two hours writing.
He always knew it wasn’t enough to have ‘one great novel’ so he honed his craft. He wrote a novel. He shelved it whilst he wrote another. He went back to the first novel and fully edited it. Then he wrote a third. Then edited the second. Then wrote a fourth. All whilst holding down a full-time job.
His debut novel will be published at the end of this year, but it is in fact the fourth novel he’s written.
He’s worked bloody hard to get where he is today, and he’s only on the bottom rung. Hell yes, I respect his determination, his work ethic and his talent.
You say all this, and cite me*, but you still don’t seem to get the point. You really do have to respect someone who can make a living from this. I know some of them. They work very hard at it. (My own book, which took – well, call the actual writing time a year, and a year to hammer out the rights and permissions and editing – still isn’t in the black. As a financial undertaking, I’d do much better sweeping streets.)
But if you think getting your stuff into print through a traditional publisher is easy, you clearly haven’t tried.
It’s CalMeacham. The research necessary to confirm this is trivial. And this is the kind of brickbat, by the way, that people throw at you when you presume to write.
A bit of admiration for the people who can do it well and sell millions.
Utter contempt for the “published authors” who have never actually been paid for their work but want to wave that little ‘fact’ in people’s faces like it means something.
Nothing but laughter and a pat on the head concealing my disdain and contempt for the dumb fucks from the usenet days who would loudly proclaim how they were “published authors” because their stuff was “published” to usenet. Sure, and I’m a published author because I have over 7500 posts “published” on Straightdope!
This is what people who dedicate themselves completely and purely to the pursuit of their art faces every corner… more often than they feel good about what they managed to have achieved. When you give everything of your very existence and risk everything, your art to you is literally everything and becomes to you a worthwhile thing for yourself/your audience/posterity/humanity… as well as, on the flip side, often doubt creeps in as to whether it is futile worthless kid’s play or some haughty pointless exercise that you wonder anyone cares. Recognition helps.
But as one of these pursuers there is an entirely different reality between fully committing yourself/making your art the number one priority of your existence to having other interests, goals, duties/obligations/commitments and agenda such as financial success besides or ahead of your art. This is one of the reasons (particularly where “art” is more taken seriously) marrying anyone pursuing art is something considered undesirable or disapproved since one has to compete or stand behind your spouse’s art.
Until you let go everything to pursue your art, you don’t know what it’s like nor the intensity or stakes of your every decision making be the same. People committed to pursue pure “art for art sake” will spot any “commercial” or “made to order” efforts miles away and you effectively become “not one of us”. Pursuit of commercial success is a distinctively different path. Ideally you would like commercial/financial success to merge with your pure “art for art sake” path at some point but you just cannot manipulate your art to make this happen because that’s literally selling your commitment to your art, ie, ‘if I do this it will sell more’ contrasted to 'if I manage to accomplish this I’d take my art form to a new uncharted next level or achieve a new level of excellence.
This is at the heart of every seriously creative people. It is an ongoing internal struggle as one of my mentor said to me once “Are you sure you want to do this… really?” He said if he was given a choice he would seriously consider the “normal” life looking at folks busily going to work in the city… Whether you are going for financial success or artistic one it is a difficult life and odds are definitely not very good. It’s a dedication, a passion, a life long meditation. I heard somewhere each and every year after graduation 99.9% give up pursuing their creative fields as their main pursuit.
As far as mechanics, I’m not saying these are the only set ways as there are people who manage to “multi-task” and achieve level of success/become notable.
I am baffled that anyone could think that getting a book into print from a respected publisher is not a very hard task, let alone one worthy of great respect. Many of us who love books really admire the writers who write them. We certainly admire them far more than someone who self publishes a book and pretends to be an author.
Yes, most writers aren’t very well paid. So what? Money is hardly the only way to ascribe value to something. Why should that concept be strange to anyone? Writing happens to be a hobby for me and one that isn’t particularly well compensated. Yet no paycheck from my day job will ever give me as much personal satisfaction as the book I hope to see in print by next year. Or the books I plan to start writing after this one is finished.
I’ve held over a dozen jobs since my first mimimum wage job I managed to get the summer I was sixteen. None of them have required as much sheer hard work or as much bravery as the work I’ve put into my book. Certainly none of them required exposing my deepest beliefs and dreams to complete strangers. Most of my jobs have required simply showing up and performing a few tasks reasonably well. Writing of any sort – let alone the kind of writing good enough to get into professional print – requires far more.
You’re damned straight I greatly respect anyone who can manage that kind of bravery and skill on a routine basis.
My point is there are not a lot of authors that can support themselves. Most journalists that I knew that actually also published books could only pump one out about every 3 years. And these were guys that were quite prolific and disciplined.
And people who are not familiar with the experience have no idea how tough it is to get that first book published by even a small (non vanity) publishing house.
Although I will agree with comments that those who publish a vanity piece or once in a magazine and then throw that out all the time are a buncha blowhards. There are some on these boards, then again some people might think my “author” comments make me a blowhard too.
I respect the author’s work, but I often do not respect the author themselves. There is a awfully large amount of entitlement in authors that have made it. There’s a lot of snobbery and looking down at other writers.
If the author has risen above all that, then I respect them. If not, they’re just service workers I pay for the content I like. I no more respect those people than I do my ISP. I don’t disrespect them, but I also don’t think they deserve any more than the basic respect given to other human beings.
And, yes, this goes with any other field as well. I save my great respect for great people.
The thing with writing is that it has forever been and will forever be something that people feel anyone can do. “Anyone can be a writer.” It’s so commonplace, it’s a cliche. And it’s not true.
I’m a professional writer, in that I’m paid to write. But I have not (and perhaps never will) published a book. I’m a technical writer, and I’ve written thousands upon thousands of pages. And I don’t think I have the skill, discipline, and sheer cussedness to write a book and get it published. I have ideas, yes, but I’m less certain that I’ve got the time, motivation, and know-how to complete one.
Being a writer is difficult, incredibly difficult, and it’s also something that will never, ever get the respect or admiration it’s due. If I wanted respect or hell, even acknowledgement in my career, I totally chose the wrong line of work. I shoulda been an engineer.
See, Snickers, I don’t think it’s a commonplace for people to claim that anyone can be a writer. For instance, nobody did here and we’re talking about the profession. Also, writers keep harping on how hard it is. Yeah, I get it. I couldn’t do it, just like a lot of jobs. Lots of people couldn’t do my job, either.
Amy Tan, I think it was, was quoted somewhere talking about how when she is introduced socially as an author that she might get the annoying response, “Oh, yes, I’ve always wanted to try that,” observing that nobody says that sort of thing to a surgeon. Well, that’s true, but it’s also true that the average surgeon would be more likely to turn out a good book than an average author successfully performing brain surgery.
sandra nz, I liked your post, but there are authors I respect and admire as individuals, too. I was more interested in your opinion of the profession.
I’d think the art for art’s sake type would be less likely to be a professional author.
It is. You immediately cite Amy Tan saying that people tell her that all the time. I’ve read plenty of accounts by authors saying the same thing. You don’t hear it all the time, I suspect, because you’re not introduced as a writer.
And it may bre true that it’s more likely that a random person will produce a decent book than that the’ll do decent brain surgery first time out, but it’s still a helluva lot harder than you appear to think.
Your OP kinda makes the point against you: your basic assertion is that writing is not hard, to the extent that everyone does it. And yet a miniscule minority of “writers” make a subsistence living off of it with fewer still knocking it out of the park.
You are looking at writing incorrectly. The act of composing something written is only part of running your business as a writer. And how you balance the art with the business while busting your ass to get everything done to promote your cause - if you don’t understand how hard that is, then I wonder what you do for a living and what your experience running a business is…
ETA: so, yeah, gotta go with “wow.” If the OP had come at the topic more like “it seems easy as I think about it, but folks seem to hold it up as a respect-worthy profession - what am I missing?” there would be a lot less “wow” involved.
Writing is not technically difficult, any literate person can successfully put pen to paper and be a “writer”. Similarly, any person who is living, who can speak and is visible to the naked eye can be an “actor”.
Folks naturally harbor this idea that a technically simple* task like writing or acting is something that they themselves could do, if they really wanted to. The reality is, if they REALLY wanted to, they would. They would have ideas in their head to write about, they would put in the thousands of hours of work to properly craft a novel or stories, they would already be the writer that they imagine they could be, if they felt like trying it.
I respect professional writers, not so much for their craft, but for their creativity. I’m not a very creative person, and am amazed that writers can constantly come up with new (or newish) ideas over and over again for their stories.
*Writing (and acting) is deceptively simple, what we see as consumers is the product of a lot of behind the scenes work to make their craft accessible to us.
I have extraordinary respect for people who can make a living as an author. It can’t be easy or many more people would be doing it. And I’ve known a couple of people who seemed to be very good at the art and couldn’t get paid for anything. All creative work is challenging, and getting paid for it even more so, and getting paid enough to make it a career, incredible.
I could point out an exception though. I knew someone who was a member of a writing team that produced screenplays for television. She was kind of ditzy, and not that good of a writer, and I think maybe got carried by the rest of the team. But that wouldn’t seem to be typical.
A writer might be published because they’re great at stringing words together, or they might be published because they’re very knowledgeable in a particular topic… Or they might be published because they just happened to land near the top of the slush pile, on a day when the editor was in a particularly good mood. The mere fact that a writer is published is insufficient grounds to earn my respect.
