Welcome to Julia Talbot's blog!

Welcome, everyone! Here's where I blather about writing, life with my wife BA, and my two basset hounds! I love to hear from readers, so comment here or email me!

Friday, February 03, 2012

what people don't want to know about writing for a living

top five, maybe? I love tip lists, and we had this talk in a chat the other night

what are the top five things, in my experience, that folks don't want to know about what it takes to do writing as a day job?

5- that it's not glamorous - nope. No Misery-like when I finish a book I go to a spa in the Rockies and smoke and drink. Just "yay, next book, please"

4- you have to make changes. Oftentimes lots of changes. no one is Mozart, doing first drafts that are perfect. Sometimes it makes us cry. But we do it.

3 - sometime stories don't work. sometimes they get rejected, or you just don't finish them or whatever. Not every idea even gets a start

2 - a lot of really famous authors have more than one pseudonym. no one wants to think a writer can write more than 2 or 3 books a year, so people diversify. Or some folks have different names for different genres. One of my favorite authors is Barbara Mertz, Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels...

1- word count. to make a living an author has to put out a lot of words. Every day. It's a job. Really. Luckily for me, it's the best job in the world.

3 comments:

KatherineHalle said...

These are all excellent points and entertaining as well. Srsly? No spa? ;p

Julia said...

cackles- no spa, though I am going to a hot springs this weekend

Sandym said...

It's really good to hear that even the pros have to edit and do re-writes. Please don't take that the wrong way, because one would never know it wasn't perfect from the start. It does us amateur writers good to hear that we might not be the only ones who struggle with getting it right.