Writing is Suffering (A B****y Rant)

#1
That face when you've just spent the last two years writing "your Brothers Karamazov" and people won't pick it up even if it is free.

That face when you've just spent the last three hours pitching your novel to publishing agents and forgot that the word 'synopsis' only has one 'y'.

That face when you've spent hundreds of dollars with editing and your novel doesn't even pass an agent's preliminary evaluation.

That face when you self-publish but your novel lacks the amount of shirtless men on the cover in order to sell.

That face when you your first drafts look like James Joyce on crack and you've just spent 30 hours refining it.

That face when still no one will read it.

That face when Iago wants you to gamble on.

Writing is incredibly unreliable as a career. Don't fall for the meme.
JUST DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND CHECK OUT Glitch!
It is funny, has colourful tables (the wonders of technology!) and art!
https://i.imgur.com/Das02fT.png

RE: Writing is Suffering (A B****y Rant)

#2
heh, to be honest unless you know someone on the inside or your work is of a sufficently high high degree, any creative career is unreliable.
that being said, tough break my friend, hope your situation gets better, or at the very least not worse. i don't know how much you would appericiate a random stranger preaching to you on the internett about leaving a plan B for yourself in case A fails, so i will save you the trouble. good luck with all your future endeavors!

ps: if your goal is to make money and not to be a published (self or not) writer then i suggest not trying to despair by failing the traditional way, there are dozens of different ways to make money out of your writing. you just have to be willing

RE: Writing is Suffering (A B****y Rant)

#3
'nasir05' pid='830390' dateline='1511538116' Wrote: heh, to be honest unless you know someone on the inside or your work is of a sufficently high high degree, any creative career is unreliable.
that being said, tough break my friend, hope your situation gets better, or at the very least not worse.  i don't know how much you would appericiate a random stranger preaching to you on the internett about leaving a plan B for yourself in case A fails, so i will save you the trouble. good luck with all your future endeavors!

ps: if your goal is to make money and not to be a published (self or not) writer then i suggest not trying to despair by failing the traditional way, there are dozens of different ways to make money out of your writing.  you just have to be willing
But you're right, buddy. You need a plan B.

Don't let writing be your plan B. It is too unreliable. :(

Thank you for your kind words.
JUST DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND CHECK OUT Glitch!
It is funny, has colourful tables (the wonders of technology!) and art!
https://i.imgur.com/Das02fT.png

RE: Writing is Suffering (A B****y Rant)

#4
Well, I guess it is. It's like having a piece of content go viral or winning the lottery. You don't choose for it to happens. It just happens.

Part of it it's down to skills. Better content is more likely to be noticed.
Part of it is due to connections. Having friends in right places help.
Part of it is opportunity. Having the piece of content that an audience is looking for, helps.
Part of it is dumb luck.

Have none of those factors, and you'll never be noticed. Have few of them and you'll have some success. Having all of them results in mainstream success.

I understand that if your goal is to make a living from writing, and you are unable to do it, it can be frustrating. It's like making a startup and failing to have it succeed (Tried that several times ^^'). It is up to you whatever you keep trying or give up and search something else to do. The only sure thing is that if you stop, you won't succeed. Remember the story of Edison and the lightbulb. He didn't fail 999 times. He found 999 ways not to do a lightbulb. Until he found the one way that actually worked.

Personally I write as hobby, so even if I had just one reader, I wouldn't mind. My return is the enjoyment I get from writing. And I do enjoy it :3 My novel is nowere as popular as the top ranked ones, but I'm totally fine with that. I have several readers that are very active and that makes writing even more rewarding for me. My readers use comments rather then reviews to give feedback. And I improved much thanks to that. It wont get my novel to the trending fictions, but I don't mind.

I actually wrote a note some times ago, with some considerations on the subject of hobbies and jobs:
https://royalroadl.com/fiction/12501/twilight-over-arcania/chapter/168210/authors-note-hobby-vs-job
https://www.royalroadcdn.com/reyadawnbri...TcjPAk.jpg
Twilight Over Arcania - My take on the resurrection theme

RE: Writing is Suffering (A B****y Rant)

#6
'Tanaka Tomoyuki' pid='830403' dateline='1511593891' Wrote: All I can say is don't give up, pal.

Failure is the road to success. As long as you keep on trying, you'll succeed one day. I understand that life and reality never work the way we want to, and I'm not going to give you false assurances and impractical advice like "you'll definitely be a writer." However, if you have a dream, the moment you give up is when the dream dies. So don't give up. Keep on trying. Yeah, let's be practical. We have bills to pay. We have lives to live. If that's the case, write as a hobby and continue publishing online. Get a job, I don't know, it could be any job. But you can't have everything in life - perhaps even as you managed to get a stable job, but you still want to be a writer, focus on the latter instead of career advancement. Or something.

All I can say is that everything ends the moment you give up. So don't. And I've read your works - they are brilliant and well-written. The agent is a fool to reject your work. Hold your chest high and have more confidence in yourself. Prove that agent wrong. Reality may demand a lot of things from us, and life never goes the way we want it to, but that doesn't mean we should roll over and let it kick us around. Struggle, resist and continue writing until the very end.
Thank you. It's been really hard. 

If I could go back in time, I can't tell you that I'd have made the same choice. I'll keep trying to make my time not just head straight to a trash bin.

Thank you again.

@Cassidy

Stick it out, pal! 


I believe in ya. 

Do it for the story, not for the girls with salami nipples and agents with dog-eared cheques!

Thank you. :)

Haha.

@Reya

I think that "as a hobby" is the best way to write. Think about how many hours you waste sending query letters and doing in-depth polishing of your own work instead of actually writing.

I'm taking measures to reduce the importance of luck and making me a safer bet. RRL is part of that strategy.
Hopefully it will work.

Thank you for your insights. They were really helpful. Specially the one about Thomas Edison.
JUST DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND CHECK OUT Glitch!
It is funny, has colourful tables (the wonders of technology!) and art!
https://i.imgur.com/Das02fT.png

RE: Writing is Suffering (A B****y Rant)

#8
Remember that the thing with agents is that they don't pick the best books.
They don't go around looking for the next biggest new idea.
They are traditionalists, they stick with what they know works without any thought as to what would work, if only they gave it a shot.
So, prove them wrong and make them bleed. Your writing is good enough and in publishing, despite what trad pubs want you to believe, there is more than one way to skin a cat.
And if you are set on trad publishing, remember, some of the best books got rejected by 80 different publishers... Only getting accepted on the 81st... Persistence is key, and while it won't substitute for a good book, if you have all you ducks in a row, everything else will surely follow...
Dungeons, betrayal, a summoned hero, and the beginning of a magical revolution. Welcome to Era.

RE: Writing is Suffering (A B****y Rant)

#9
Literary agents are looking to find a book they'll fall in love with and can represent well.

There are some predatory agents, but you'll know them when they start charging you for shit.

If you're looking to write a synopsis for a query, you might want to head to query shark. It's a blog maintained by Janet Reid of New Leaf Literary. She goes over queries with a fine tooth comb and points out everything they're doing wrong.

'Alexis Keane' pid='830445' dateline='1511671573' Wrote: Remember that the thing with agents is that they don't pick the best books.
They don't go around looking for the next biggest new idea.
They are traditionalists, they stick with what they know works without any thought as to what would work, if only they gave it a shot.

This is like reading observations from a different Earth. Literary agents have specific genres they work in and their own tastes, but I've never met one that wasn't on the look out for something genuinely new and interesting.

Seriously, read this reaction to a query. The agent is literally going around showing it to her co-workers because of how fresh and different (and funny) it is.
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