Advice for aspiring writers

People often look at actors and think how hard could it be?

It looks easy to stand in front of large crowds and use parts of your own life to stand emotionally raw in front of an audience that is drawn into the moment and share that sort of intimacy. Real acting is often conflated with screaming foul language and posing as a tough guy, waking up in manufactured sweat screaming, NO! Sure anyone can read a script in front of people (unless you're afraid of crowds) but without an understanding of how to break down text, to pull real feelings out of yourself you sound stilted and fake.

Writing feels like the same thing to some people. "I can write a book and make a million dollars," thinks anyone who has ever read a trashy novel or Twilight. But the fact is it is much harder than those people think. First of all, let's just move past the notion that making a million dollars off a book is going to happen. Unless you're Stephen King, promoted by Oprah or a controversial public figure it's probably not going to happen. Most writers don't get to do it full time. If you want that kind of money you are going to have to write non stop across many mediums and even then real wealth may simply be beyond you.

In todays era of the internet and self publishing it is true anyone can get a book made. You can throw any dreck on a printed page and some company will make sure you spelled it all right and throw it out there for a grand or two. A friend of mine at work told me about a guy he knew who made a MILLION copies of a book he wrote about his life's philosophy. He didn't promote it. He just thought his genius would start a riot and it would fly off the shelves. He didn't start with 5000 copies to create demand with the presses ready to go back to work. This (inherited) millionaire just fronted for what now fills a warehouse with no market research, no advertising and no buzz.

The writing of the book is the fun and rewarding part. Making money off of it is the real work and it involves tallking about yourself well beyond the limits of what most people are comfortable with. Now please understand, getting to the point where you have anything ready to go is is a hike up the mountain before hiking up the higher mountain, If you're like most aspiring writers you have the limbs of your story strewn about your workspace. A beginning here, an ending there, a few dramatic middle parts, lists of characters and plot ideas and one day, if you're lucky a halfway decent short story to try ands get published.

If you're good, you will start getting picked up by zines either local or national. These are normally put together by your local writing enthusiast and if you're lucky he has some sort of standard for what he will put in this amatuer periodical which means you pass a test and you aren't embarassed by the shit you see on the page facing yours. Use this as an opportunity to network with other writers and people in the arts. Let me say this again, I can't stress it enough NETWORK, All the breaks that I've ever gotten have come from knowing other people who know where

the demand for talent was. If they respect your work and they like you they will throw things your way. People in the arts with no friends in the arts, brilliantly talented or not, are people you will never hear of.

Now, one pet peeve of mine is the loose definition of writer people use. Journalists...writers. Copywrighters...writers. Fiction writers...writers. Biographers, poets, published historians, people publishing in academic fields and folks writing in similar contexts are all writers. They convey ideas, they use complete sentences and know there from they're from their and other things that composers using "C U L8R" do not have a command.

If you write in your journal about your hopes and dreams and don't show anyone ever...not a writer. If you wake up and shorthand your dreams into a blank book that never sees daylight...not a writer. Shopping lists don't count. Things you write that will never have an audience because you're too shy, the contents are too personal or because you don't have the nerve to allow anyone an opinion on what you have written you do not get to announce to a room full of people that you are the same as someone who has worked hard at their craft, laboring in obscurity trying to make their voice heard.

I know you love Grisham, Nora Roberts or J.D. Robb but don't kid yourself about the amount of understanding of the subject matter you need to have. It's almost a cliche now to say, "write what you know." If you try to write a courtroom thriller but don't know the law even kind of people can tell. If you're writing a murder mystery but don't understand how to follow clues or what motivates a criminal or even what makes other people tick kit's going to fall flat.

If you know about life in a small town then find a story to tell that exploits your knowledge of that. if you work retail the world of something like "Clerks" is real to you and you can be convincing with it. If something interests you persue it or do research to the point you can ring true. Be who you are, be honest and straight forward with your work. That is what people want to read no matter what. If you can establish a real emotional connection with your reader then you have done right.

Now I am going to impart to you a truth that is going to sting a little. Brilliant, creative ideas are like flies on shit. They're everywhere and most people have at least one. Great concepts are easy. Executing an idea to make it interesting, exciting, inspiring, funny or moving is hard as hell. Don't tell me your idea. I don't care about an idea in its infancy, there are 1000 directions to take it in and 964 of them will suck and be so embrassing on analysis you were better off to not have tried. Don't come up and unravel this idea you've been working on since third grade certain that this will be the next Horse Whisperer or Shogun if only someone would pay you to write it,

Do not wait for someone to hear about your incomplete, non started idea and pay you a fat sack of cash to write it. They won't. People pay for completed pieces of work, not ideas for them. if you're a novelist or short story writer then write this materpiece. If you're a comic writer get a reliable artist (they're hard to find and luckily I have 3 I can work with but they took YEARS to find) and create this vision so people can read and judge it without trying to imnagine what you're going for.

And finally, if you complete the work and it makes people puke but you just have to be a writer...keep writing until your good. Read other good authors, read your work outloud to yourself or someone else to make sure it rings true and write about everything that interests you. Experiment. Push boundaries, keep that journal and write to yourself to get better. If any one part of these things I've told you is more work than you care to do then quit. You have to chase this roadrunner for years, sometimes decades before you catch a break and if you aren't persuing it as a calling or because you absolutely love the work you are wasting your time.

Now, having said all that I'm going to open it up...any questions?