Okay, the first annual Snake Rivers Writers Conference is
coming up in a couple of weeks, and Konnie is arriving, so she can attend it,
in just over a week. I’m kind of excited both for her visit, and finally being
able to attend a writer’s conference.
Though I’m not all that sure about attending either. I have
been active in the online writing community for years, and I’ve met quite a few
people who thought they could write a best seller without being much of a
reader. They think writing is easy and a quick way to get rich. Neither of
these opinions are fact, quite the opposite is true.
First off, writers are readers, period. End of discussion.
Second off, writing well is dang hard! Writing well enough
to sell is even harder, and managing to write a best seller is one in a
billion.
The market is saturated with people who think they can
write, and too many of those end up self-publishing because, according to them,
agents and editors don’t know a good thing when they see it. Which explains why
I’m leery of self-published books.
That isn’t to say all self-published authors are garbage,
far from it. Richard Paul Evans started out self-publishing his book The
Christmas Box, and my niece L.C. Ireland is an excellent writer who
self-publishes. Look her up, she’s on Amazon. She’s fantastic. There are others
as well, but I find far too many of the self-published authors fall into the category
of self-absorbed, self-important fools who can’t see past the end of their noses.
And they are totally unteachable. Refusing to learn about
show vs tell, echo, redundancies, tags, beats, info dumps, and all the other
rules of good writing. One or two think their rough draft is a masterpiece
needing no editing whatsoever!
I once met a man who asked me to critique his first chapter
of his novel, what he sent me was more like a synopsis of a series than a first
chapter. Just for the information of all the nonwriters out there, a synopsis
is sort of like an outline of events without bullet points, it is far from a
novel.
That fellow blocked me after I told him my opinion of his
so-called chapter, because, apparently, I don’t know what I was talking about
and clearly, I’m not a good writer. (Too bad I don’t agree with his opinion!)
Another fellow I met absolutely refused to use standard
formatting or structure, making his manuscript impossible to follow and
understand.
And I’ve known several who told me out right that agents and
editors don’t know a good thing when they see it. One tried to point out as his
proof how many rejections a long list of best sellers got before they sold
their famous novel. Excuse me? They eventually found an agent or editor willing
to publish, all of them published traditionally. Just because some of the
agents and editors didn’t accept those novels doesn’t mean all of them can’t
recognize something good when they see it. After all, it is a matter of opinion
what is good and what isn’t. And agents and editors wouldn’t get very far in
this very competitive field if they couldn’t tell the difference between
excellent writing and garbage.
By the way, I read an excerpt of that fellow’s manuscript,
full of typos, telling, redundancies, echo. In other words, he was trying to
pawn off a rough draft as a masterpiece! Talk about ego.
Actually, all of these fellows had way more ego than talent,
which reminds me of a saying I attribute to a character in one of my unfinished
novels. “The braggart has more ego than talent.”
And I’ve yet to see proof that isn’t true. Everyone I’ve
ever known who bragged about themselves were never as wonderful as they put
themselves up to be and everyone I’ve known who let their talent speak for them
was excellent in their field.
Nowadays whenever someone starts strutting around, I avoid
them. I’ve had my fill of people like them.
I once worked with a fellow who thought he was God’s gift to
womankind, and strutted about the place in cutoffs and flipflops to show off
his tanned, blond, muscular body. I was far from impressed with him, and that
drove him nuts. All the other eligible girls he worked with were swooning over
him. Young female guests at the lodge were swooning too, but it bothered him that
I didn’t see him as all that special.
He had so much ego that he couldn’t understand that beauty
is in the eye of the beholder and cutoffs and muscles don’t impress me.
Anyway, happy writing everyone.
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