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Writing and Publishing, Part 3:
Creating the content:
I want to restate here, that I want to encourage new, not necessarily
young, writers. Once you are old enough to earn your eagle's badge
and vote, age is the most irrelevant factor in the human situation.
The only thing that decides peer relationships, from then on,
is our level of consciousness. That, of course, is a matter of
personal endeavor and commitment. I have met 20 year olds who
are very conscious beings and I have encountered 50 year old men
who never escaped from puberty.
Now, I cannot honestly encourage anyone by telling them fairytales. Writing is a tough business. I believe you can succeed, but it is very hard work and not for the faint of heart, or for quitters. You must be prepared for a great deal of rejection. Even giants like Steinbeck received their share of rejections. If you don't like hearing that, you have some options. You can simply not read this. You can buy a book on writing and self publishing and read that. You can also write your own version.
For myself, I want to encourage writers, not lie to them. If you need pandering, go to your mother or to a rabbi, minister, or priest. Don't expect me to soft-soap you. All I can do is tell you about my experience. To be sure, you do not have to hit as many potholes as I did, but you will encounter some. How many, is a matter of your own preparation. I do not promise to tell you everything, just what I have learned.
In choosing to be a writer, I believe it is most important to ask yourself the question, why am I writing? This is a key question. One of my critics said that writing was a hobby for him. I'm not sure what message he meant to convey by that. We can hope that he simply meant he did not expect to earn money in writing. For most writers, that would be a good assumption. So, if your answer is to be rich and famous or to earn a good income, you should realize this. For most of us, writing does not pay the rent. You have chosen a tough route to success. Most people who write, do not make a living wage. They are really time-and-a-halfers. They write for the pleasure it brings them. (Please don't write to tell me that halfers is not a word. I know that.)
For me, writing as a hobby is not enough. I get pleasure from it, because I feel I have something to say. If you don't have something to say, why bother to write? I believe that giving others entertainment and/or useful information is worth my time. These are both legitimate motives for writing.
The first book I wrote was the Wesoomi Gardening Journal. What I had to say, was the things I had learned about gardening over the years. The book came about quite by accident. I mention to a friend that I was compiling my notes on gardening so I could find them when I needed them. She was quick to request a copy. I, of course, agreed. Then I thought, wait a minute, who else might find my notes useful? The answer was, anyone who enjoys gardening might want a copy.
"Great," I said. "I'll write this as a book and have it published." Being only 65 years old, I was very naive at the time. I have matured some since then. I worked hard and wrote the book. Then I began looking for a publisher. As I scanned through my copy of Writer's Market, I was dismayed. I discovered that most publishers have a response to query time of several months. Looking carefully at their requirements, I realized that, even if my book was accepted for publication, I could easily expire before it got published. I was looking at delay times between 18 and 24 months.
It was then that I understood that I would need to publish my own book. I was sure I could at least match a delay time of two years. I went to a book store and, sure enough, I found a book on self publishing. The book made it seem simple enough. The steps were all there. I set about following the steps and I did manage to get the book published. I also learned a great deal along the way. If I had know about the pitfalls I would encounter, I may never have started. Most of them could have been avoided, if the self publishing book I choose had been more carefully written.
Although the gardening book did not make me healthy or wealthy, creating it did make me wiser. In addition, I had a publishing company. That was good, for I realized I had much more to say. I had a great number of thoughts and ideas which I wanted to share with other folks. It was at that time that I created a pseudonym for myself. I created Willie Gaffer to write a different kind of book. This was "The Gaffer's Shorts," a collection of humorous, provocative, and angry pieces. I'll have more to say about pseudonyms at another time.
The point to make here is to know why you are writing. The answer to the why question will determine your target audience. For any writer, be it short story, novel, essay or article, it's essential to know who you are writing for. Who is going to buy and who is going to read what you are writing. This includes the final customer of the work, the reader. It also must include the publisher of the work. However, we will deal with editors and publishing in other discussions. For now, it is sufficient to say that your book must be published in one way or another.
There are some other requirements to being a really good writer. I will just list some of them here and expand on them in later essays.
First you must be somewhat crazy. You must open up and let your creative subconscious loose. When you do that you take some risk, for the suppressed madmen of you soul are sure to be lurking in that chamber.
Second, you must have an enormous ego. You must believe that you have something to say which other people will want to hear. Of course, this makes it extremely difficult to deal with rejection or criticism, of any kind.
Third is about being yourself. This is important. You really can't be anyone else. If you attempt it, you will only write poorly. Of course there is risk in being yourself. You could damage some relationships.
I had a friend, a very nice woman, who thought she liked me until I asked her to proofread my book, "The Gaffer's Shorts." In that book, I expressed and exposed a large part on my total self, including the suppressed alter ego, Willie Gaffer. It turned out, the woman had a totally inaccurate image of me. As we all do, she had projected some kind of personal ideal onto me. She realized that she didn't really like me all that much.
We are still friends, but the bonding that we thought was there only existed in fancy; hers and mine. Neither of us was the person we had projected onto the other. She had me down as a kindly, thoughtful, nice, old gentleman, not unlike her father. I had her down as much more worldly and sophisticated than she was. This is part of the risk in being yourself in writing.
Next time, I will take up what I call the genre box. Should
you get into it?
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