As Jerry Pournelle has said for decades, aspiring authors should plan to throw away their first million words before mastering the craft and beginning to sell:
That’s not to say that writing a million words will cause you to sell, but just that if you have the potential, you’ll still have to endure that grueling apprenticeship. Blogs and new media have changed this somewhat: it’s not just rejection slips any more; you can self-publish in a variety of venues and, if your work has merit, gain a following. This is a wonderful thing, especially as the legacy markets for entry-level fiction have been evaporating.
John Scalzi has remarked that the reason that most novelists are older than artists in other media is that it takes them some time to write that million words that end up in the shredder (he didn’t put it precisely that way–I’m paraphrasing). I think he’s right.
But the crucial thing in getting past the reader’s junk filter is getting the basics right–not just spelling and grammar but making characters believable and dialogue sound right–and that probably takes about a million words to perfect.
Excellent advice across the board. It rivals my own book on the subject, “How to Talk and Write English Good.”
[Are you intimidated?]
Frank Glover:
My Momma has all manner of expressions, but two that I remember were “Frances” when she meant “for instance” and “that’s not funnymagee”, when she thought the tag line from the radio show “Fibber McGee and Molly” of “That’s not funny, McGee” was somehow a word in the English language.
I guess Momma’s excuse is that English was her third language after Serbian and her native German.
My parents were both immigrants into the English language of the Swing Era, but the Fibber McGee thing predates that. In the family, what we think happened, is that where Dad worked, the accountant was named McGee, and people like Dad had to turn their travel expense reports (Dad worked as a research engineer on government contracts requiring travel to job sites) over to Mr. McGee. I also think he parceled out the money to the various accounts and purposes whenever they got a goverment contract award.
At work, everyone took to ribbing McGee-in-accounting with the “that’s not funny, McGee” line, and somehow Momma thought “funnymagee” was a peculiar English-language word.
English can be a difficult language for immigrants. My wife is an immigrant from the Philippines. We’ve been married for 27 years, and to this day she sometimes asks me to explain what an expression means. Most of the time, the expression is really absurd when you think about it. Explaining an expression, especially slang, is like trying to explain the humor of a Farside comic to someone who just doesn’t get it.
I think reading good writing is also key to becoming a good writer. We all imitate to some degree or another, might as well stock the cellar with good stuff instead of junk.
Journaling a page-a-day was mandatory in freshman comp.
Not all of your thoughts are profound.
I can feel this one!
I like the way Rand says a lot with few words and the links are always great reads.
Me fail English? That’s unpossible!
Lincoln was the greatest “less is more” President, ever…EVER.
And perhaps a subset of Tip #10:
http://lifehacker.com/5635042/commonly-misheard-expressions-to-avoid-in-your-writing
As Jerry Pournelle has said for decades, aspiring authors should plan to throw away their first million words before mastering the craft and beginning to sell:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html
That’s not to say that writing a million words will cause you to sell, but just that if you have the potential, you’ll still have to endure that grueling apprenticeship. Blogs and new media have changed this somewhat: it’s not just rejection slips any more; you can self-publish in a variety of venues and, if your work has merit, gain a following. This is a wonderful thing, especially as the legacy markets for entry-level fiction have been evaporating.
John Scalzi has remarked that the reason that most novelists are older than artists in other media is that it takes them some time to write that million words that end up in the shredder (he didn’t put it precisely that way–I’m paraphrasing). I think he’s right.
But the crucial thing in getting past the reader’s junk filter is getting the basics right–not just spelling and grammar but making characters believable and dialogue sound right–and that probably takes about a million words to perfect.
Excellent advice across the board. It rivals my own book on the subject, “How to Talk and Write English Good.”
[Are you intimidated?]
Frank Glover:
My Momma has all manner of expressions, but two that I remember were “Frances” when she meant “for instance” and “that’s not funnymagee”, when she thought the tag line from the radio show “Fibber McGee and Molly” of “That’s not funny, McGee” was somehow a word in the English language.
I guess Momma’s excuse is that English was her third language after Serbian and her native German.
My parents were both immigrants into the English language of the Swing Era, but the Fibber McGee thing predates that. In the family, what we think happened, is that where Dad worked, the accountant was named McGee, and people like Dad had to turn their travel expense reports (Dad worked as a research engineer on government contracts requiring travel to job sites) over to Mr. McGee. I also think he parceled out the money to the various accounts and purposes whenever they got a goverment contract award.
At work, everyone took to ribbing McGee-in-accounting with the “that’s not funny, McGee” line, and somehow Momma thought “funnymagee” was a peculiar English-language word.
English can be a difficult language for immigrants. My wife is an immigrant from the Philippines. We’ve been married for 27 years, and to this day she sometimes asks me to explain what an expression means. Most of the time, the expression is really absurd when you think about it. Explaining an expression, especially slang, is like trying to explain the humor of a Farside comic to someone who just doesn’t get it.
I think reading good writing is also key to becoming a good writer. We all imitate to some degree or another, might as well stock the cellar with good stuff instead of junk.