Sarah Jane Elliott
Word Games
Saturday, April 17, 2010
On Writing, and What Not To Do
It's just occurred to me that this is the closest thing i have to a "writing" icon. I really need to do something about this....I had an interesting conversation with a friend at work today who wants to start publishing his writing. Amongst other things, we deked off at one point into the subject of self-publishing, and why people do it. Now, there are definitely reasons for self-publishing. If I ever wanted to produce memoirs of my grandmother's garden, for example, I would probably self-publish it because only my family would ever want to read it. But I actually want people who don't know me to read my books. So I'm going the route of a traditional publisher.
I've written two complete books and two half-novels I abandoned back in high school because they read like I wrote them in high school. I'm currently working on the third book. It needs some work, but I think I might actually have it this time.
Setting the first two aside was hard. They're not forgotten, but they're also not good enough right now. And, especially given certain things observed at a recent convention, this is the problem a large number of self-published authors run into. Rather than put things aside when they're not good enough, or an editor tells them it's not good enough, they decided to publish it anyway.
Fair enough, that's their decision. And some people handle it fairly well. But some people... well, appear to lose their minds. They start doing things, and putting these things on their professional authorial website, that absolutely boggle the mind. And not in a good way.
It's not something you see only in writers. I've seen it in the bellydance community, and American Idol has made it plainly apparent when it comes to singing. Sometimes people can't face the fact that they're not instantly fantastic at whatever they choose to do, and retreat into a completely different reality.
I'm very glad that I have people around me who will stop me from ever doing that. Though if I ever self-publish and go crazy, I am totally changing my name to Gryphonia Sparklepants.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
