by
Janis Patterson
Is there anyone out there who
doesn’t know writing is a business and should be treated as such?
Unfortunately, our business has
always attracted groupies and wannabes, which is both good and bad. Some do
develop into good writers. Some don’t – ever, no matter how hard they try and
study. Some just want to be known as having written a book, basking in the
automatic profit and adulation which is inevitably due to any published writer.
(You may snigger or cry here, or both.) Some just want to claim a published
writer – preferably a famous one – as a dear friend – whether they actually are
or not.
Along with groupies, there are
others who populate our lives and must be considered – family, friends,
co-workers, our children’s (or grandchildren’s) teachers and schoolmates,
libraries, lecture groups – add your own categories in here. They are legion.
Unless they are a writer, though,
most people don’t realize that this is a business, and not an easy one. People
who wouldn’t dream of calling you to chat or expect you to go lunch/shopping/to
a movie during the day if you were Assistant Supervisor of Fralumpkins at
Blurpkinner Enterprises will happily interrupt your writing. After all, you’re
just writing, and that’s easy, isn’t it? And everyone knows that if you work at
home you aren’t really working, are you? You’re your own boss, so you can do
what you want. Then they get offended when you say you can’t, interpreting it
as you don’t want to be with them. The situation is even worse for those
dedicated writers (of whom I stand in awe) who juggle a day job and children,
squeezing their writing into those precious slivers of time between immutable
obligations.
Writing is work, something that
must be pursued and applied and sacrificed for. Writing well is all that and
more, just harder. And it’s not just writing – there is publicity that must be
done, street teams organized, interviews done, guest blogs… all kinds of things
that must be done to get your name and your book, once it is finished and
published, in front and hopefully in the hands of the buying public. If you’re
self-publishing, the work load is doubled. You must deal with (and pay for!)
editors and cover artists and, unless you are computerly gifted, conversion
into the various electronic formats – to say nothing of the brave new world of
paperback self-publication.
Plus, in the middle of all this you
need to be writing the next book. One of the facts of success in the publishing
world is having books for the reader to read. Perhaps literary authors can
linger for years between books as their fans wait and salivate for their next
offering, but popular fiction writers are expected to produce much and often or
their career withers on the vine. Sigh.
So – lunch? A movie? Shopping?
Forget it. You’ve got to work, whether or not the people who populate your life
understand.
Unfortunately, this disregard for
the hard work of writing is not a new thing. Charles Dickens once wrote :
“‘It is only half an hour’–’It is
only an afternoon’–’It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over
again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self
sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes–or that the mere
consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day… Who ever is
devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to
find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see
you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.”
As usual, he said it much better
than I ever could. Way to go, Mr. Dickens!
Now – back to work.
