Scriniary

• truepenny on whether short stories are necessary (Necessary for what?)
• raleva31 offers consolation and inspiration to frustrated writers
• the results of Tobias Buckell’s survey on how many novels people wrote before selling one (More than one, mostly.)

I don’t like to read short stories very much, so I don’t write them (I think I’ve written three, ever). I wish I did like them, because it would be nice to have a short way to practice writing from the perspectives of different types of characters, or in a different style, or setting or subgenre. On the other hand, I’ve done that with novel fragments.

Filed by scriniary at 3:30 am under Writing
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David Louis Edelman surveyed people about why they bought the books they bought.

Top three reasons: They read other books by the author, a friend recommended it, and they judged the book by its cover. Those are generally my reasons as well, and the reasons I try to write up posts on books that I like.

Filed by scriniary at 7:39 pm under Books
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Regret the Error has run its 2006 Year in Media Errors and Corrections.

It's both funny and depressing. In lieu of a studious discussion of corrections, here is my favorite: the Typo of the Year, which went to Reuters.

Filed by scriniary at 5:25 am under journalism
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In today's paper, there was an article about a woman whose first novel was recently published; she's been writing for 28 years. Or 15, depending how she counts. Also, another article on the marketing efforts authors have to make (some of which seems to deal with nonfiction).

Filed by scriniary at 4:48 am under Writing
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Various posts on the hard life of a full-time writer have been floating around (these are courtesy magicnoire, I believe):

Alison Kent has found a day job that seems to be ideal for a writer, although I think the boredom would drive me insane.

Tamara Siler Jones warns against taking a day job that involves writing because it could kill a writer’s desire to keep writing when they get home. That’s a good thing to figure out for yourself – some of us are perfectly happy to write all day. Most writing day jobs I know of (I’ve tried two so far, reporter and technical writer) mostly involve other activities than writing. (There’s a reason it’s called reporting, frex.)

I admit to being perplexed at some of these posts – not the ones above, but the topic does crop up from time to time – because they often seem to carry the message “It’s not easy! It’s not easy! It’s not easy!” and I am surprised that that message needs to be given out so many times and so stridently. I am surprised that so many people think having a full-time career as a fiction writer is easy. Maybe it’s because I didn’t start writing until I was in my mid-20s and immediately fell in with a good online group, so I never had that attitude myself. (I don’t expect to ever write fiction full-time, though I’ll jump at the chance if I get it – less time spent doing other writing = more time doing fiction.)

Filed by scriniary at 11:21 am under Writing
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