The best piece of advice I have ever heard about becoming a successful writer: "If anything can stop you from becoming a writer, let it. If nothing can stop you, do it and you'll make it."
Don't let anything, fear, fame or fortune stop you. The ultimate secret of becoming a successful author is making a total lifetime commitment.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Thursday, August 19, 2010
HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED AS A WRITER
With overwhelming statistics facing us, how can we stay focused and not get discouraged?
• Agents reject 99% of everything they read.
• Editors pass on a large majority of what agents send them.
• Fiction, especially debut fiction, almost never gets picked up, unless your platform is already incredibly strong. Having a fan base of 25,000 daily blog readers would help, but that's out there.
• Only 10% of first-time authors actually sell through their advance.
• Only 8% of published writers make a living through writing alone.
• Knock that down to 1% for a comfortable living.
I am probably not sounding very motivating right about now. But these statistics are out there for all of us to see. We can either let them overwhelm us, or be determined not to be one of those statistics. I hope we can all ignore the numbers and continue to work on the words. What do we focus on: fear-inducing statistics, or the love of writing? The love of writing must be our primary focus.
Most of us will get many Form rejection letters. After all look back at the statistics, 99% of agents reject all they read. It doesn't mean they hated it. Or hate us. It doesn’t even mean our stories stink. Almost all best selling authors have enough rejection form letters to fill a book. Form rejections, unlike personal rejections, do not need analysis. They don't require us to destroy our work and start over.
They're very polite, at times seem almost apologetic and sometimes they seem a little easier to except than a flat no, but in reality what the agent is clearly saying is a simple, No thanks.
What a form rejection letter simply means to me is, that I'm going to query again. Find new agents to send my work to. I know my agent is out there hiding and it’s up to me to find him or her.
Every No I receive is one step closer to the Yes waiting.
• Agents reject 99% of everything they read.
• Editors pass on a large majority of what agents send them.
• Fiction, especially debut fiction, almost never gets picked up, unless your platform is already incredibly strong. Having a fan base of 25,000 daily blog readers would help, but that's out there.
• Only 10% of first-time authors actually sell through their advance.
• Only 8% of published writers make a living through writing alone.
• Knock that down to 1% for a comfortable living.
I am probably not sounding very motivating right about now. But these statistics are out there for all of us to see. We can either let them overwhelm us, or be determined not to be one of those statistics. I hope we can all ignore the numbers and continue to work on the words. What do we focus on: fear-inducing statistics, or the love of writing? The love of writing must be our primary focus.
Most of us will get many Form rejection letters. After all look back at the statistics, 99% of agents reject all they read. It doesn't mean they hated it. Or hate us. It doesn’t even mean our stories stink. Almost all best selling authors have enough rejection form letters to fill a book. Form rejections, unlike personal rejections, do not need analysis. They don't require us to destroy our work and start over.
They're very polite, at times seem almost apologetic and sometimes they seem a little easier to except than a flat no, but in reality what the agent is clearly saying is a simple, No thanks.
What a form rejection letter simply means to me is, that I'm going to query again. Find new agents to send my work to. I know my agent is out there hiding and it’s up to me to find him or her.
Every No I receive is one step closer to the Yes waiting.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Feedback
My co-author decided to share our book with someone without my knowledge. We never shared the entire book with anyone before. We’d given them a taste of the book to promote interest, but wanted them to wait until it was in print to read the rest.
At a birthday party I was approached by the woman who’d read the book. She announced to me that she had just finished it. Through my shock, I asked her if she liked it. Much to my delight she told me very enthusiastically that she loved it.
She went on to express her feelings of the parts that worried her, parts that made her nervous, parts that made her laugh, and parts that gave her Goosebumps. She spoke about the characters as if she knew them personally, as personally as we knew them.
She got it, the parts that were meant to bring anxiety did. The twists, for her were intense. The characters that were meant to be loved, she loved. How rewarding this was to hear.
I can’t wait to share our story with the rest of the world; to introduce to them our invisible friends, and make those friends visible in their eyes also.
At a birthday party I was approached by the woman who’d read the book. She announced to me that she had just finished it. Through my shock, I asked her if she liked it. Much to my delight she told me very enthusiastically that she loved it.
She went on to express her feelings of the parts that worried her, parts that made her nervous, parts that made her laugh, and parts that gave her Goosebumps. She spoke about the characters as if she knew them personally, as personally as we knew them.
She got it, the parts that were meant to bring anxiety did. The twists, for her were intense. The characters that were meant to be loved, she loved. How rewarding this was to hear.
I can’t wait to share our story with the rest of the world; to introduce to them our invisible friends, and make those friends visible in their eyes also.
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