Wednesday, 20 April 2011

R is for Reality and Writers


When my kids first got excited about Pokemon, I was disappointed. Within a short amount of time they had learnt the species name, stages of evolution, habitat, strengths and weaknesses of hundreds of these creatures. I kept thinking, if they'd put that effort into learning about real animals, it would at least be useful information. Sometimes I get too hung up on useful.

You can find lots of posts and information on the web about the reality of writing, what your chances are to land an agent, how hard it is and how much rejection you'd face before you ever get published, and, if you self-publish? Forget about becoming the next Amanda Hocking.

Big raspberry at reality. Who needs it? I invite you to come and live in the land without reality. In this nation, all you need to do to get your book published and out in the world is simple. Write it. Write it, finish it, edit it, finish it again. Then do up a synopsis and an awesome query letter. Rewrite those a few times too. Readers? If you write it, they will come.

Of course, time is more salient in the not real world, so we don't panic about how long it takes, we just write another book, and another, so they'll be ready when the publishing world catches up to us. The big rule in the not real world? RELAX. Enjoy the experience.

If you do have your feet planted firmly on the ground and you want to know how to get back to reality? You can't get there from here.

No comments:

Post a Comment