It would be amusing if it weren't so sad.  Reading the writer's magazines, I get the impression that all one has to do to be published is to write a terrific story, self-publish your own book, promote it and make it a success, then------some benevolent publisher will come along and be willing to accept the profits.  Are we stupid, or what?

writer'safool 

You can also shoot yourself in the foot for free by joining an on-line critique group populated by sharks who can't stand it because you wrote something they didn't, and it's better than their stuff; and by those curious creatures who admit they don't have a feel for your submission and don't really know what's going on in it, and then critique it anyway. Better to just read, read, read; see what sells, find out what works that way, and ask the dog to critique your latest chapter.

Hi Candy,

They say that when you're suffering from burn out, you should read and read some more.  But, I have found that by writing outside of your area also helps.  I normally write non-fiction magazine articles.  When I get in a rut, or burn out, I will write several pages of horror, science fiction or something sexy.  It helps to take your mind off of what is causing the stress.

I have to agree with you.  I have read some books that were real stinkers. This should give all of us encouragement.  If a poorly writen book can be published, then our well writen book will surely be published.

Good luck to you.  Keep us posted on how you do.

If there are suckers in the writing business, they have fooled themselves.  It's the people who are looking for the short cuts, the secrets, the "inside track" to writing success who are most vulnerable to all the scams that come along, the greatest of which is vanity publishing.

 A few years back, highly successful author Stephanie Bond wrote "Sissies Need Not Apply".  You can read the whole article at:  http://www.stephaniebond.com/PDF%20files/Writers%20Articles/MYOB--Sissies%20Need%20Not%20Apply.pdf

It would be amusing if it weren't so sad.  Reading the writer's magazines, I get the impression that all one has to do to be published is to write a terrific story, self-publish your own book, promote it and make it a success, then------some benevolent publisher will come along and be willing to accept the profits.  Are we stupid, or what? writer'safool

If you can write a terrific story, that is pretty much all you have to do to get published.  And you won't need to self-publish.

I hate the way so many writing magazines push self-publishing.  Most do it for the money, and the only money most will ever see from self-publishing comes from from the writer, not to the writer.

I'm not one who believe much bad fiction gets published, and I've always thought thinking it does can lead to serious disappointment.  When someone says a published novel is bad or boring, they usually mean they don't like it, and it bored them.  And in simply thinking it's bad or boring, they miss whatever merit it has that made an editor buy it.

The simple truth is, the worst published novel out there is better than 99% of what lands in the slush pile each and every day.  So much better that it seems like great literature of the ages in comparison.

Writing is a sucker's game, if you go into it thinking that all you have to do to sell a novel is to write one.  And it's a double sucker's game if you go in thinking that bad novels get published all the time, so whatever you write should sell like ice cubes in hell.  Bad novels do not get published all the time.  The worst published novel out there is probably the result of a lot of hard work, and has something going for it that most writers will never find unless they approach that novel as something above and beyond the average, even if they personally hate it.  It is something above and beyond the average.  If noting else, it's infinitely better than anything else the editor could find in the slush pile.

Even writing a bad novel is beyond the ability of many, let alone writing a good one.   Most overnight successes in this business are the result of years of failed efforts.  It never fails to amaze me that so many who want to write seriously think a first novel should be any good.  There is no other field where anyone would think a first effort equals a professional effort.  Far more often than not, a first novel is really the fifth or sixth or seventh that writer has finished.

A writer must have native talent, but native talent isn't enough.  A writer also needs skill, and skill doesn't come easily, and seldom comes from first efforts.  A writer also needs to respect the competition.  In a sense, writing is like running the marathon, in the Olympics.  Some people run it a lot faster than others, but the last place finisher is still going to kick the butt of anyone outside of running who thinks that last place finisher is a bad runner.  He isn't bad, he's just a bit behind the very best the world has to offer.

And that's exactly how writers need to look at the published novelists out there.  You may not like the books they've had published, but they're usually still pro level writing that simply finished some distance behind the leaders, and you still need to produce a quality novel to beat them.  You are not going to beat them by believing they're bad at what they do.  They may be bad compared to the handful of great writers, an dmay even be bad compared to the double handful of good writers, but they're bad only in comparison to the best.  They're still far, far above the average wannabe writer, and the only way you'll beat them is by working just as though you have to be better than the best, not the worst.

Even writing poorly is tough enough, and writing well is beyond most.  Writing well, plus knowing what a good story is, and then knowing how to tell a good story, and then filling that story with characters readers care about, and then writing dialogue that brings those characters alive, is one of the toughest acts on earth.

Writing is a sucker's game, if you go in think it's easy, or that anyone can do it, or that half the published writers out there are bad, or that first efforts are automatically any good, or that it doesn't take just as much hard work and training as any athlete needs.

There are no secrets, but there are a lot of ignored facts.  If you want to succeed as a writer, you need to first have talent, and you need to realize that the worst published writer out there does have talent, and you are not going to beat him by thinking he doesn't.  Then you need skill, and the only way to obtain skill is by having a serious work ethic.  You have to write and write and write and write some more.  Probably for years on end.  And you have to read and read and read, and then read some more, probably from the time you're old enough to hold a book.

The only shortcut is to find some way of putting in more hours writing and more hours reading.

Y'know what? It really IS a sucker's game.

We have pretentious literary magazines that not only don'tpay, but guarantee space to writers who choose to "sponsor" their efforts with cash donations. In other words, vanity publishing.

We have writing "contests" in which you pay to have your work read, with no assurance it'll ever appear in print. Worse than vanity publishing. Contests which give no assurances that the "winners" haven't already been pre-determined.

We have agents who knows your ms doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of being accepted, but who ask for fifty pages anyway. 99 per cent rejection rate. Please send fifty pages. No e-mail queries. (No, thanks. Any agent who needs more than five pages and a synopsis to evaluate a ms is only subsidizing the US Postal Service.)

Oh, yes -- we have authors of books on how to write best-selling novels who are willing to share with you, for 19.95, the secrets of writing best selling novels, who apparently can't write best-selling novels of their own or they wouldn't be sharing such information!

For than matter, we have on-line forums in which writers, for reasons I still don't really understand, share what they know. Let's get real. There isn't a writer in any of them, including good old BTR, who wouldn't trample everyone in the group if it meant landing a writing job. So go ahead and give away your secrets, and help the competition write better dialog and create believable characters, and point them towards the best market lists. You deserve to finish in second place.

I don't know if this information will/can help anyone but here goes...my daughter's 4th grade teacher is friends with a sales agent from Random House who was at her school in early May to drop off some promotional items (for his students) for the book that was a take-off from the popular, "Holes", called "Small Steps." Anyhow, when I found out she was coming, I wrote a note to her teacher and he had her call me. This is what she said...

 To write a childrens book- or any book for that matter, you do NOT need an agent. It helps, it's nice but so not necesaary at all! She said the most important thing was to get it published yourself and begin circulating it. Just get it out there! She also told me about that teen boy who wrote the book Eragon? (I think that was the name) She said he and his family didn't know anything about agents/publishers, all of it- so they just published it themselves. Somehow they got the grocery store, "Albertsons" (a west coast store I believe because they had them in California when I lived there) anyhow, they got them to carry it in their rinky-dink book section- you know, by the magazines, where a Random House publisher and his son happened to be doing their grocery shopping. She said this guy's kid hated to read books and was doing miserably in school but it was his summer break so his dad took him to the book section while they were there and said "pick one, you're reading a book this summer or basically no summer for you!" So his kid picked "Eragon" to read and liked it SO MUCH, that he had his dad look it over who obviously liked it enough to re-publish him and now he has a movie deal or something? So this is what I'm doing...*!@#* the agents, I'm doing this myself at lulu.com or something similar to it. I'm done wasting my time, it's a waste of time obviously seeing how most everyone on here hasn't had any kind of luck. I even checked out J.K. Rowling's website (very cool BTW) and she said she had many turn downs because people didn't think it was good enough. Yeah she happened upon the Christopher Little Agency and they took a chance but how many does one have to contact...and how about that wait!? This is just my opinion so I dhope I'm not offending anyone, that isn't what this was intended to do. BEST OF LUCK TO EVERYONE!!!! Don't let anyone bring you down, keep going!