Some writing advice...on advice
Added 2023-08-12 16:41:18 +0000 UTCI haven't done this for a while, but after seeing a bunch of writing advice on Twitter, I felt compelled to writing some of my own.
This next part is not a flex, it's to add context.
I regularly chat with some of the most successful fantasy authors in the world. Others that I don't know personally or have just met once or twice, I follow on social media.
My take on writer advice? All of it's worth consuming if the person giving it has some success. How-to artistic advice is not a one-size-fits-all sorta thing. Everyone needs to find their own groove. But that's on the actual writing side.
The most important x-factor of being a full time author who actually pays their own bills is finding one's audience. Now /this/ is a lot trickier.
It's kind of a jagged pill, but finding an audience kind of boils down to a combination of hard work, luck, genre understanding, talent, and practice/skill. The exact mix and circumstances will be different for everyone.
I don't think it's possible to become hyper-successful (by the metrics of the majority of working authors out there) without having a love for the genre one is writing in...or that one creates. Authors chasing the flavor of the week might make some money, but they're not going to blow up.
Writing is a marathon, not a race. This will always be true. But it's also true that running a race we have no passion for leads to dead ends.
The greatest irony in the writing game is that the authors who end up making the most money often aren't initially chasing financial success, they're just telling a damn good/fun story.
So if you want to be a full time author, and you're writing this, take away 2 things:
1. Tell your story, don't chase a meta.
2. Don't just talk about it, sit down and work. Get your book(s) done soon, because finding an audience isn't getting any easier. There are more ways to connect with new readers now, but there are also more and more options available. Lots of extra noise.
...and the last statistic I saw stated that fewer people are reading anymore.
Comments
For aspiring writers 2 bits of advice. First - have destination in sight. Getting the inspiration to write a story is one thing but you should start with the end in mind. I’ve list track of the amount of both traditional and web novels that have either stopped mid story or list their way. That doesn’t mean you have to outline if you want to pants it, just know where you are heading. Which leads to the second one - plan for success. Sudden success has derailed many a writer. Royal Road is full of them but so are many traditional series. I refer to it as fourth book syndrome as it’s usually at this point that traditional novelists lose their way and waffle their way through 600 pages of nothing or attempts to reset. Web novelists are worse. I can point to dozens of stories that generated a ton of hype (often well earned) but fell apart because the writer didn’t have a plan. For those who want to write a web novel for therapy (again RR is full of them) success can sometimes be as bad as failure.
John O'Connor
2023-08-12 23:34:54 +0000 UTC
