Apr 21, 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.

17 comments:

  1. I love this post! Very inspirational. We can all use this reminder. :)

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  2. Awesome thoughts and post. I love it. It is so important to enjoy the ride. I know I get too caught up into the being published so that I can feel accomplished.(It is one of my schema flaw:) Thanks for the reminder that reality is there but we can forget about it once in a while and just relax.

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  3. Very great post :) And very needed. Thanks for the inspiration!

    Sarah Allen
    (my creative writing blog)

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  4. what is it about pokemon? A friend's child gave my 5yo maybe 15 cards and he just sits and stares at them. So obsessed. My one consolation is that he is also obsessed with dinos, so some of his memorization-obsession is useful.

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  5. So, we're waiting for the publishing world to catch up with US. Okay, write on!

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  6. *sigh* I have plenty of reality in RL, thank you very much. That's why I like fiction so much =D

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  7. Reality? Pfft. I write and read books to escape reality ;)

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  8. I like the sound of this place. Are we allowed to bring in fruit?

    regards
    mood
    Moody Writing

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  9. btw I just found the comment about e-mailing (got marked as spam for some reason so only just came across it). The only way I know is to open the person's profile like you said, although not everyone has their email listed. No shortcut as far as I know.

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  10. I accept this invitation to "live in the land without reality." haha I adore this post - particularly the part about being ready for the publishing world to catch up to us. And I do agree that we should be allow to enjoy our writing-non-reality experience! Great Post!

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  11. Love the road map. You can't get there from here. This just inspired a short story. Thanks! and have a great week/weekend.

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  12. My take on Pokemon: If you can't beat them, join them. I still know all the names of the originals. The new ones are all posers.

    As I posted a couple of days ago (letter O and P combined). I think there's never been a better time to be an author. Opportunities are amazing and will continue to be so. I'm very optimistic about the landscape for writers.

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