This Writing Fad

One thing being overweight most of your life teaches you is that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Fad diets are just that, fads. They come and go with each generation and don’t really change all that much. They’re not healthy and they don’t produce lasting results. You might be able to lose weight with SlimFast®, but as soon as you start eating like a regular person, instead of getting the bulk of your nutrition from a prefabricated drink, you’re going to regain as much as you lost, if not more. And the FDA… don’t trust them either. Just because they say a weight loss drug is safe, doesn’t mean it is. No medication just released has seen long-term use in the general population. Better to sit back and wait and observe than to risk even more serious health issues than already created by carrying extra pounds on your frame.

Even if you religiously keep to the 1500 calorie diet currently recommended, you still won’t slim down if the bulk of your nutrition comes from potato chips (one 2 ¾ oz. bag of Lay’s original Kettle Cooked chips contains 450 calories) and candy bars (one king-sized Reese’s has 400 calories). In the end, the only things that really work for long-term weight loss are: 1) address any underlying issues for weight gain/failure to lose weight, 2) exercise, and 3) eat a balanced diet. You know, the things that are hard, difficult, and take work.

If anyone suggests anything else, it’s probably too good to be true, and therefore will not work.

The same is true of writing. There aren’t any quick fixes. No easy solutions to navigating the publishing maze. If anyone suggests otherwise, they’re trying to sell you a fad diet that’s going to cost you more in the long run.

Writing professionally, takes discipline. It’s hard. It’s work. There will be times that you fall off the bandwagon and indulge your whims. When that happens, the only thing to do is stand back up, dust yourself off, and hit the gym – or place your butt in chair, as the case may be.

Being a professional takes balance as well. It’s highly unlikely that you will be able to make a living doing only one type of writing, at least not in the beginning. Making a living writing nothing but fiction is straight out.

Yes, yes. I know. Fiction is the fun stuff. It’s why you got to be a writer in the first place, but the reason you can’t make a living at it has nothing to do with you as a writer. It has everything to do with the realities of the market right now.

When it comes to short fiction, very few markets pay a professional wage. Most pay in the neighborhood of $.01 per word. Some less. Many less. At these rates, to make even $100 from a story, it needs to be 10,000 words long. Now, go research the number of short fiction markets that accept that length. Very few. Most want 3,000 words or less. So, in order to make a part-time wage, you need to sell approximately 3 stories a week, every week. There just aren’t that many market available right now. I don’t know if there ever were. Then, for fun and games, take into account the number of people attempting to be writers these days. They’re all submitting work, too, and many of them are just as good as you are and some are better. Most are worse, but even so, when even the smallest publication has three to five acceptable stories for every slot they have available, the odds are greatly diminished of the stories you’ve written getting chosen by the editor three times a week

What about novels, then, and receiving an advance? First, many advances aren’t that much. Certainly not enough to live on for a year. Second, novels are a long-term investment. From the time you finish it, at the absolute least, it will be a minimum of a year before you receive any monies from it, advance or otherwise. And that assumes you sell it in the first place.

How can you ever hope to make a living as a writer in this day and age? How do others do it? Diversify and find a niche. By diversification I mean don’t concentrate on any one medium. Write non-fiction as well as fiction. Write puzzles, greeting cards, magazine articles, and hire out your services to those who lack your skill. By find a niche I mean find a topic or subject matter that you do well. Are you a health nut? Corner the health-writing market. Do you like martial arts? Then research that? Are you a parent? Hey, that’s fertile ground. Exploit what you know all over the place and never, ever be ashamed of doing so. And don’t ever let anyone tell you this writing thing is easy.

But then, nothing worth doing is.

Loneliness

I think we’ve forgotten how to be alone. No. That’s not true, because I’m often alone. Alone in my car. Alone in my office. Alone in my room. What we’ve forgotten how to be is lonely. Too often when we’re in danger of becoming lonely, we reach out electronically to other people who had been in danger of loneliness. Through our cell phones, e-mail, and the internet – forums, newsfeeds, blogs – we can always find another soul to connect to. This isn’t always a bad thing. Think of the people whose lives have been enriched, or saved, this way. Think of the times someone has needed a shoulder, and found it, because of how much smaller technology is making our world.

But this newfound interconnectedness comes at a price. What we’ve lost the ability to do is respond to ourselves, to be alone inside our heads. Thing is, that is where individual strength comes from, where we learn who we are. If, when we need to think something through, form an opinion, or overcome some hurdle in our lives, there is always someone out there to help us, how are we ever to foster a dialogue with the one person in our lives who means the most to us?

How are we ever going to learn to communicate with ourselves?